Javier Hernandez drew the short straw last night!
Asked to play one up given he’s not a line leader in a game which was always going to see us defending deep was about as bad as it could get for a goal poacher.
His failure to show a thing was no surprise and I for one found my heart going out to him in what was a hopeless mission.
He had one moment when he could have moved away from just over the halfway line and head at speed towards goal but he couldn’t quicken and the chance was gone at a stroke.
Match fitness could be blamed of course but my view is that Chicharito is facing a future as hopeless as the 90 last night.minutes he faced against Spurs.
It’s crystal that Moyes teams are all about running and athleticism which puts Little Pea at an immediate disadvantage after a spell in the Bundesliga which may have blunted his speed anyway.
He looks like a guy in the wrong place at entirely the wrong time and the arrival of a boss who had sent him out on loan at Old Trafford always looked like a killer blow.
At reported wages of around £140k a week in a set up which is entirely alien to his game it’s hard to see a way forward for the highly likeable Mexican.
Great player in the right team, great person but I reckon this one is going to end in tears in the summer.
Another striker disaster. But we do have three, plus maybe Ayew, to choose from. And Arnautovic if he is not being signed off for the rest of the season as we speak. OK, they all have significant problems, especially injury related, but a lot of the relegation candidates are really short of strikers. The experts always say that the thing that the relegated sides have in common is lack of strikers. Although Sunderland last year had Defoe…It is still possible that Hernandez could be ok with a partner. Before his injury he scored a few, even in the shapeless shambles that was Bilic’s set up.
Talking about possible targets, here is one who isn’t playing for whatever reason in the French side Lens, and seems interesting : John Bostock. Left footed, with a creative edge.
He’s a bottler
No doubt he’s a top goal scorer and playing up top on your own is not easy. But for me he doesn’t hassle enough.
Hernandez is being starved of a platform and supply, he had one chance last night I still don’t know why he didn’t just run another two steps and try to be tackled, he must be seriously unfit if the lactic was building up from a 30 yard sprint he was goal side just step into the box and hope for a tackle that earns a penalty… he set off on a lot of runs in the first half and no one released the ball which is not his fault it’s a fault of the team that we can’t see passes and play the ball into space.
That was the problem before we bought him 32 ? Made no sense then a and still makes no sense now ? Midfield is and was the problem defensively and offensively ? The lad has no chance and its not his fault lol. Sully bought a name , same as hart without vision and add the carvhalo circus entertainment and you see one of the biggest problems in the club! Sully’s transfer stranglehold and the money he won’t spend for quality , because he doesn’t have it !! Total waste of salary’s with hart , pea, Carroll, !! Half a mill a weekish ?? 😕
Chica is a dwarf and will never win headers or many contested balls in the area. His strength has always been feeding off the scraps the bigger players give him. He has no stamina to make runs as seen against the Spuds. He definitely has a place in our team if we can play him with big Arnie and maybe Ayew or a new big man up front.
Problem being we don’t play to Chic’s strengths. We brought in individuals with no over-arching game plan or vision, so we’ve bits of three different jigsaws that just won’t fit.
If we had the players capable of playing a back four and not conceding for fun then we could consider a front two with Chic and a biggy, but we haven’t. As Laz said earlier, the only way to fix this is to rebuild from the back and defensive midfield, developing a foundation which enables us to deploy two up top. Ideally Moyes will plan long-term, identify the structure, then start to change the personnel so he can build a team capable of delivering within a 4-4-2. If he can’t, then the honest conclusion is we use Chic as part of a plan B or move him on.