David Gold has revealed that Diafra Sakho is in great spirits and can’t wait to get back on the pitch.
Despite The Sun proclaiming this evening on line that Aston Villa have blown the Hammers out of the water with a £14 million bid for Scott Hogan, the real truth is that Slaven Bilic was never interested in the player with all the running being made by recruitment director Tony Henry.
Bilic was always ready to gamble on Andy Caroll’s fitness and Sak’s return which is estimated at between six to eight weeks but with Andre Ayew soon to return from Afcon he believes he’s well covered.
Gold tweeted: “Spoke to Diafra today he’s working hard on his rehab and is looking forward to resuming training. Great to see him in such high spirits. dg”
That Aston Villa should pay £14 million for Hogan makes more sense than the Hammers buying him because he is proven at Championship level and there are only three teams in the division who have scored less than their 28!.
Bilic always took the view that he wasn’t really at Premier League level and that he was not prepared to gamble on the 24 year old.
Regular headlines over the last three weeks that we had bid this that and the other were entirely untrue because at no stage did the manager ever give an indication that he was interested – a position confirmed by David Sullivan on TalkSport this morning.
Bilic is a huge Andy Carroll fan and hold Sakho in the highest regard and can’t wait to see the two in harness again whilst holding onto the £10 million until the summer after the sale of Dimitri Payet.
Glad that Bilc is a huge AC fan. So am I, but what are the chances he will play 15 games? And Sakho due back 6-8 weeks. At worst that is start of April. I notice a few of those ‘doomed ‘ sides have stirred themselves tonight.
I was undecided about Hogan so no big complaint about not going for him, but the way the Hogan thing has been dealt with has looked poor to me. If Bilic has the final word but didn’t rate him why has it dragged on at all through Jan? What the article says ‘Bilic was prepared to gamble’ on AC sums it up for me. The owners saw us beat a couple of average sides & get 28 points.B***** it, put the cheque book away. Time for a gamble. Ok it should be all right now, so I guess we don’t have much to play for. But it’s still a gamble.
So not a bad TF. Just a bit of a worry at the end of it. Let’s hope those doubts are crushed tomorrow night. Surely we have to do better than last time.
Sounds smart bit of business business,
Don’t forget Calleri never left and Fletcher
Plus Antonio
We are covered sooner had seen a right handed defender on the books
But a happy hammer here
I don’t see an issue in Henry as head of recruitment looking at players then giving the final word to the manager.Seems a decent system to me.I mean i saw that all three,Bilic,Henry,Sullivan must agree on a player but lets not kid ourselves here we wont sign a player Bilic doesnt want & the Poison Dwarf involvement will be the money side of the deal even if he might have some input about the players ability.
Any player signed is a Bilic signing,he has signed it off.I read so much b0llocks about poison dwarf buying players that Bilic doesnt want but its bullsh1t.
Not sure about putting the cheque book away Hammer64,it seems pretty clear from Sullys interview if Bilic had really wanted Hogan he could have him.
If Hogan was that good, someone other than Villa would have got him. Considering the way Villa played tonight, he’ll be gone in the summer somewhere else.
Fonte & Snodgrass will do for me.Im glad the window is shut.Im bored sh*tless of reading experts tell us what money we did or didn’t have available like they have the bloody club accounts under their pillow 😂😂
Ok Coolio- fair enough. I didn’t listen to the interview to be honest. Yeah see your point about Henry doing the sizing up. I just feel maybe we should have had a clearer strategy earlier on. Hogan hardly played in recent weeks so decisions on him one way or the other should have been made before the window even opened. Bilic can’t really have changed his mind based on games in Jan, so why didn’t he just say ‘forget Hogan is there anybody else worth looking at’. Or is it that Bilic can’t make up his mind. The fact that he seems to have been a big Tore supporter worries me a bit.
On a positive note I have watched a bit of Ayew in the AFCON & been quite impressed. Don’t think we have got the best out of him yet. Must be that he has a great manager of Ghana. Who? Not the same Avram Grant? Avram story. Friend of mine has little kids. A couple of years ago they go to the kids Xmas party. Players are there, including Nobes & Carlton. They come up to his kid who is about 5. Noble says to him ‘So what position do you play?’. The kid says ‘Don’t know’. Quick as a flash CC says to Noble ‘Hey mate sounds like you when Avram was boss’.
Lol nice one,thats a good story 64 😂
I dont think we have seen the best of Ayew yet.He was out for a long time with an injury so i will give him a fair crack of the whip.Hopefully this AFCON has sharpened him up.
The thing is with the Tore signing was yeah he was pony but he aint the first & he wont be the last player who hasnt been able to cut it over here.I thought he would be a good signing myself having watched him.I said at the time i had seen him a fair bit because a turkish friend of mine gets all the turkish league games streamed so i saw him a lot & rated him,but to be fair he looked shocking over here so it shows i wont ever make it as a head of recruitment 😂😂
No, nor me Radai. Lost count of the players I have seen & told everyone how great they were based on one game, then looked a real prat when they end up at Southend. I remember seeing that Besiktas fans really rated him, so there you go. But he did look a donkey for us.Sorry any donkeys reading this- no disrespect.
Thats a funny story Hammer64…Very good..Christ sake i was just having a sweep of the sites to see what fans were saying after today.My god we have got some miserable b4stards support us lmao.As for twitter,well that is brutal & thats being kind.It must be a full moon i think!
I think the real hard core moaners must have still been in nappies when we had AG. That really was something to moan about. That Jan we bought in Demba Ba. A born goal scorer. AG’s theory was play him on the wing, then all the defenders will follow him, leaving a gaping hole for the mighty CC to bang in the goals. Even though AG did his best to stop Demba scoring he still got about- I think- 7. But not enough to avoid the drop. Those were bad bad days! Kouyate, Fonte, Obiang, Carroll, Cresswell, Sakho,Antonio etc.No comparison
The Hogan saga was dragged out by the newspapers being desperate for a story. Any story and if nothing’s happening they make one up. Not a peep from the club you’ll notice.
it would be better if there was no January transfer window that way clubs do there transfers in the summer & have to rely on with what there got. that’s why stupid money gets spent in January