Wednesday, April 15

Chelsea after Cresswell while Cole remains indestructible

More bad news this week. First Liverpool were claimed to be trying to hi-jack West Ham's move for Carl Jenkinson (valued at £10m by Arsenal) and now yesterday's Evening Standard claims that Chelsea are considering bidding for Aaron Cresswell, with Man City also interested. Cresswell has been just about our best player this season and is a bargain at £3 million. Every player has his price, but even so to lose him would send out the wrong signal for next season.

Meanwhile there's more problems on the injury front. Diafra Sakho has aggravated an existing thigh injury against Stoke (should he have played at all?) and will be out for several weeks, while Enner Valencia was trodden on by a Stoke player and could be absent against Man City. Which would leave Carlton Cole as our only recognised frontman at City. You do have to admire Carlton's durability; at various points he's been ranked behind Dean Ashton, Bobby Zamora, Freddie Piquionne, Demba Ba, Robbie Keane, Victor Obinna, Andy Carroll, Diafra Sakho and Enner Valencia, but is still at Upton Park and still getting his share of games.

The side badly needs shaking up at City but we're running out of options. Certainly Morgan Amalfitano should get a game and maybe Nene and Matt Jarvis too. Diego Poyet might also be worth a chance as he's young and hungry. The biggest enigma is Alex Song, who started well against Stoke but faded again, having been our best player earlier in the season. According to the Sun he wasn't happy at being subbed. Is he unfit, out of form or resigned to moving on?

2 comments:

mj said...

To maintain some stability and stay up we should keep Sam

Pete May said...

A decision would surely settle the players a bit… Unless Jurgen Klopp suddenly decides he's an Iron, I'd agree that we're better off keeping Sam despite the recent slump. Still signs of progress overall and hopefully this set of players will last the whole season next time