It might well have been Connor Wickham (right) at £8 million if Sunderland had had their way.
Instead it was a desperate Diafro Sakho at £3,5 million after some well known hiccups along the way.
We won’t go into the whys and wherefores of why that on/off situation situation with Metz developed. Sufficient to say that at last the Hammers have had a result in the striker market.
So far this season Wickham has managed one league goal in eight appearaances whilst Sakho – oh go on say it again – has managed six from six including the League Cup defeat.ig favour
My understanding is that Wickham was very much the first choice of Sam Allardyce and Teddy Sheringham but Sunderland did us an enormous by over-pricing the player by some distance.
Sometimes you get lucky and the Hammers went back for the Metz player at £3.5 million – rising after 140 appearances to £7 million. Thank you very much Metz.
It’s all very easy in retrospect of course and after the Modibo Maiga disaster it’s easy to see why the club may have wanted to stay British but I never got the Wickham thing at all. Too many injuries, not enough goals.
We certainly deserved a break on the striker front. In fact no club deserved one more given the record over recent seasons.
So thank you silly Sunderland for your over-pricing of an average striker, thank you Metz for kicking up a fuss, thank you Mr Sullivan for going back in for Sakho and thank you Diafra for the goals.
We always wanted sackho but when we heard wickham was available, a proven goalscorer in English football we thought maybe it was too good an opportunity to miss. We needed cash though so tried to switch sackho deal to a loan move. Remember sackho could easily have been another maiga for all we knew. Luckily wickham was overpriced and Metz threatened legal action over us trying to pull out of buying sackho and switching to a loan deal. Wickham was overpriced. The obvious thing was to go ahead with the sackho deal after all.
Got to agree mate, I never got the Wickham thing either! Never a natural in front of goal and didn’t have any pace before all his injuries.
I also couldn’t see what we would do with him when/if carroll is fit. Too similar in style, where as playing carroll with Sakho. Valencia, zarate, downing gives us so many attacking options and styles!