Who goes down?

Well they let him go and then re-signed him out of desperation because of Carroll's ongoing injury. Bet that made him feel great.

Funnily enough, he scored the other day. Who'd have thought it..?

 

Has had one start this season. Has scored as many goals as osvaldo.

You've got the situation wrong actually. He rejected a new contract so was released. Then trained with us to keep fit and ended up signing a short term 3 month deal to tide us over until January.

 

Oh OK, Hands up on CC.

On the subject of Osvaldo scoring goals, it's matter of time that he adjusts, not that he isn't up to the task. He isn't getting quite the game time as yet, but then we get into the touchy, nay hallowed subject of replacing Rickie Lambert on the field of play. Dani has managed to be two opposing things at Saints. 1] Very popular with the fans, and 2] occasionally Rickie's replacement when he is deemed more suitable by Poch. Anyone would have a hard time replacing Rickie as a goal getter, but Saints fans appreciate that Dani puts in a shift and he plays with passion. That's as much as we can ask from him until he finds out where that onion bag is.

 

Yes agree. He put's in a proper shift and looks totally comitted.Give him time to adjust and he'll more of a scoring threat.

 

Agreed. It's not as though Osvaldo is missing chances. He fluffed one early on against West Ham but apart from that he's been feeding off scraps and getting frustrated. He works hard, chases down defenders and looks committed but the rest of the team aren't creating many good opportunities for him (or Lambert come to that) to score goals.

 

You've got my trouble Lamb. You occasionally miss entire words from a sentence. I bet you're saying the complete sentence to yourself as you type too.

Just read my post above and I've missed out one or two there as well

 

Think it's called getting old TSS!

 

I think you're right.

 

If you're happy spending 14m (or however much he was) on "he doesnt score goals but is committed and puts in a good shift" then thats up to you.

Carlton does all that too and he was free!

 

I've said all along that I don't think West Ham will go down. That they may flirt with relegation for a while, but they are a solid enough team for the most part and so will pick up enough points to be safe. But I still reserve the right to laugh when they lose to a Marouane Chamakh goal. What is the situation with the January transfer window Trixter? Presumably you'll want to bring a striker in, but, do you have to sell first?

 

Allardyce said in the summer that they had reached the financial limits of FPP and would have to sell if they wanted to buy. Presumably nothing has changed. He also made some comment about us being in the same boat and then we bought Dani

 

Dont remember him saying that about southampton Fran. Cant find any quotes on it either?

Diarra, Maiga and Carlton will all be offloaded in January which will free up plenty of wages to sign a striker and one or two other squad players im sure.

 

I think it was actually your Chairman. Remember seeing it on Skysports.

 

Think it was along the lines of that he was surprised that teams like Southampton were still signing players when they (West Ham) couldn't because they had reached the FPP limits.

 

Yes that was it RSS.

 

Think you are right.

 

Why not compare like for like, and compare Osvaldo with Carroll, both were signed for a similar size fee. Out of these two, I'd prefer Osvaldo, and least he can get onto the pitch to play!

Not sure about what you said about Carlton Cole was entirely true, according to the BBC report, it states that the club decided not to renew his contract. There's also a quote from Allardyce saying "Carlton's need at his age is to be playing football as often as he can. We felt it better he found pastures new." This states that they didn't feel they needed him, so the club let him go.

Here's the link: http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/22622496

He might have turned down the club's offer of a new contract, but it might have been because it was a rubbish offer, not that he didn't want to stay as you made it sound

 

I think the point is it's too early to say that he doesn't score goals. Osvaldo has consistently scored goals thoughout his career. Not bucketloads but you can't expect to get a striker who scores bucketloads for 14m these days. He's made maybe 10 appearances for us. I'd say it's reasonable to give several seasons of goal scoring more weight than 10 games in a side that generally doesn't enable its strikers to score goals. Obviously if he gets to 50 games having scored 5 goals then he'll be seen as a flop but we're nowhere near that yet.

Lambert had a significantly better scoring record in the Premier League under Adkins than he does under Pochettino. So if there's a problem (and judging by our results and league position I'm not sure there is) then I don't think it's Osvaldo or Lambert, it's that Saints don't create chances for our main strikers.


I think the David Gold comments people are talking about are in here:

[video=youtube;ObhjhnE8pWk]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ObhjhnE8pWk[/video]

 

So it was after you'd signed osvaldo then and not before?

So nothing like what Fran said then.

Re. Carlton. I guess we will never know. Karen Brady said he was offered a very good deal but wanted first team football so he was released. He said he had a few offers including 2 prem teams but nothing interested him and in the end it made sense for everyone that he re-joined.

Carrol vs Osvaldo eh? I suspect Carrol will have a considerably better goals per game ratio this season. Younger and English. Yeah I still think he will prove the better signing.

 

Same as any position, you have to sign players based on the tactics you play. It depends what you want from a striker really, a cultured european with two good feet and an eye for a pass or a donkey that you can aim your hoof-balls at.

With our system of passing the ball to each other on the floor, we would prefer Osvaldo, whereas with Fat Sam's tactics, Carroll is the better choice.