Our mate and partner Gonzo from Hammers Chat suddenly gets hit by a wicked realisation ….read on!
I spoke to Hugh on the phone today and whilst discussing our striking options the realisation and full implications of our striker situation hit me full force.
That we are desperate – despite all the talk of big transfers talk but are now desperate for Carroll and Sakho to return and improve the team – is really worrying.We are simply no better than we were before. We really are going Back to the Future!
We were chasing Michy Batshuayi all summer as if he was the chosen one but I’m not sure it would have made any difference even if we had signed him. He’s third choice for Belgium and a Chelsea reserve yet rumour had it we were willing to cough up £30m for the bloke.
Then there was Carlos Bacca who was supposed to be a brilliant striker. However, Milan want to sell him in the New Year which says rather a lot. Granted, he has scored six Serie A goals this season but Edin Dzeko has 10 and even Mental Mario Balotelli has plundered eight.
My point is that £25m doesn’t get anyone decent these days, it merely gets somebody else’s cast-off. The truth is that we can’t afford a good striker and I’m not even sure we can afford a good RB (the two positions needed to improve imo).
People will mention Lacazette when he regains fitness but he is totally unproven and was not even included in the France squad for the Euros so we can only assume he’s not as good as Olivier Giroud.
The truth is that Griezmann is world class . . . . .. . he’ll get you the 20 goals needed to improve but good luck getting him for south of £70m particularly when Higuain cost £80m.
We’re nowhere close to challenging for top four and now Chelsea & Liverpool have sorted themselves out and hired world class coaches we’re even further behind. We’ve plateaued and it will require an awful lot of money to take us to the next level because to put it plainly and simply it’s a money game.
We may eventually sign a player for £30m but don’t expect him to be the messiah . . . . . . . that’s about a third of the going rate for a player with divine genius.
lol Gonzo… frankly, I don’t want the Messi(ah), but someone who scores some goals and who can run without a crutch lol… in my view, Batshuay or Lacazette are top strikers and they could the answer… the first one is very young and has no place because of Costa, the other one is unproven, but he has speed and killer instinct… maybe not the saviours of the world, but definitely better than a kick in the ba//s… lol 😀
We have been doing the same for three seasons now,always buying cast offs or loan strikers all because the China Doll ‘will be back soon’.Nothing will change until he is off the wage bill & his 80-90k is freed up.Its a total farce 😉
We should see if we can get Jannsen from the Spuds, for some reason he can’t get the ball in the net for them but he is always a goal threat and has been a bit unlucky plus he is playing for the Spuds aka the strikers graveyard, they have a much worse record than us for failed strikers.
It is time to accept we made a bad decision in signing Carroll after the loan season, to give him the contract we did and more serious the salary we agreed to pay him.
As others are saying we need to bring an end to stop gap signings, we need to replace Carroll with someone of quality, the way many of the summer signings are currently it looks as if we will be having another clear out, this time we must not make the same mistakes again, I worry about the upcoming fixtures we have and the way we are.
There is no Striker chaos because we don’t have any . Slaven wanted goals to be scored from all positions from all over the park . There was never a concentration on strikers as was evident in our summer signings . Our problem is the lack of strikers and the system to get them on the end of the ball .
The more successful teams are playing with a defined style of play. We are not. On Saturday we had one striker in the box – ayew isn’t the tallest- against 4-5 defenders. We aren’t creating chances but we aren’t tracking back and defending well either- begs the question what are we doing.
I think we could have had Suarez up front this season and he would have struggled so far. Build up play is too laboured, we can’t afford Payet and lanzini in same team and noble isn’t up to it.