You can believe this one if you want to but it comes with a warning – it is published in the Sun this morning and generally we know what that means beyond the silly season having arrived!The player has made just 21 Premier League appearances this season and according to the imaginative minds on the Sun sports desk “the former Nottingham Forest man could jump at the chance to join Palace following their impressive revival under Hodgson.”
They follow that with a reminder of the former England boss’ achievements which currently see the team 11th in the table.
They then claim that Hodgson wants to add the “missing piece in his jigsaw” – Antonio – to jon the likes of of Wilfried Zaha and Andros Townsend.
Antonio – they remind us – signed a new four-year contract with West Ham last season while Slaven Bilic was still in charge, but it remains to be seen if he still has a future under David Moyes.
Interesting that because if Moyes really is staying that may have been a more emphatic story but in the world off assumptions, supposition is king I s’pose!
There is a lot of supposition to this story and as you rightly point out, it did come from ‘the Sun’ so we should take it with a pinch of salt.
I think fans will be in two minds about Antonio this season, it’s certainly not been good for him. We can put that down to the injuries but also Bilic and Moyes probably wanting to play him before his 100% fit again are just compounding those injuries.
I think he deserves another season to see if he can replicate the same form that we know he can (once he is 100% fit) but we should also be wary that he may drop off and never regain that form pretty much as we’ve seen Cresswell’s demise since that great season he had in 15/16.
At the moment the way the squad/team is operating, we don’t seem to be missing him but we all know how strong, fast and dangerous he can be so lets just keep this one in our top pocket for now.