Wednesday, January 18
Striker light
Good piece in the Guardian today by Jacob Steinberg on West Ham's astonishingly poor record of buying strikers under Sullivan and Gold. It mainly repeats what's been said on various fan sites before, but the stats are pretty damming. We've had "32 mishits in seven years" and no West Ham striker has ever scored more than 20 goals in a Premier League season. There's a clear pattern of buying cheap gambles that often don't work out. Only Sakho, Carroll (when fit) and Demba Ba have proved successes. Among the flops are Mido, Benni McCarthy, Modibo Maiga, Wellington Paulista, Maroune Chamakh, Robbie Keane, Mladen Petric, Marco Borriello, Nikica Jelavic, Emmanuel Emenike, Jonathan Callleri, Simone Zaza and a host of other names we'd rather forget. Click on the link to read the whole piece.
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4 comments:
An excellent article in the Guardian which highlights the terrible history of finding quality strikers.
This is why it makes good sense if we can pick up 1-2 proven strikers (from the Championship or the EPL); however, we do have some excellent prospects like Marcus Browne, Grady Diangana, and the talented Domingos Quina (amongst others), who could develop into very fine strikers.
Max is right about some of the promising young strikers, with Antonio Martinez scoring a goal a game for the U23s and Jahmal Hector-Ingram for the U18s.
Personally I blame Shaun Wright Phillips
Yes, we could do worse the give some of the kids a chance. And according to the Guardian Martinez cost £2.4 million, a lot more than Ashley Fletcher, so presumably quite a prospect.
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