Tony Cottee reckons he would have been anticipating leaving West Ham if he hadn’t scored a goal in 17 games.Writing in his Newham Recorder column TC said: “West Ham have played 17 games so far this season and in that time not one striker has hit the net and for me that is an absolute joke. I was a striker and prided myself on scoring goals.”
“I think the longest I went without scoring was 10 games, so if after 17 games, not just me, but all my fellow strikers had failed to hit the net then I would be making a bee-line for the exit door.
If you want to work out why we are sitting fourth from bottom in the table, look no further than that statistic. It’s embarrassing to think about.”
Both Andy Carroll and Diafra Sakho are expected to return after the international break, and will hopefully be able to improve on the performances of both Simone Zaza and Jonathan Calleri who have so far failed to impress since their arrival at the club at the start of the season.
One thing I will say is that the system Bilic plays doesn’t lend itself to strikers scoring other than from crosses, he uses the striker as a hold up man similar in fact in most ways to BFS except we play more football in between defence and the forward line with Bilic. Cottee played wth McAvennie which helped him as they worked well as a pair and on the occaisions I saw TC up top on his own he looked an awful player, I think when Sakho is fit we should definitely look to play two up top I am sure then we will see the strikers start scoring.