Lets see who scores more next season . If an 'in decline' rickie Lambert can out score your 'marquee signing' then that's not saying very much for him is it?!
Remember all of your talk about how the hoofball was just a temporary diversion from your normal style while you bedded down in the Prem? You now have a six-year commitment to it. Enjoy!
Watching The Apprentice just now and wanted to shout "you should be fired you silly bint, you are paying Andy Carroll 100k a week" at Karen Brady.
Surely the signing can only been seen as a coup. Carroll is the perfect fit for that style of play. I think he will certainly improve there without the massive pressure on him. Also, with the money being thrown around in football these days, it amazes me how many people seem shocked with player wages! That being said, I would not want him here.. Just doesn't seem interested sometimes. And we like work horses here!
I don't like him. I don't like his hair, i don't like his face. All in all i really don't like him. How can he not be good in the air, he's f*****g massive.
He is a perfect fit for their style, but that's both a blessing and a curse. Their style is going to need to be built around his strengths for the foreseeable future; they would really struggle to move his contract, and he's an ill fit for a more passing-oriented tactical approach.
And this is why, although Carroll is reasonable value, it's an awful signing. West Ham are traditionally a football-on-the-ground side, or at the very most, a pioneering side of the near-post cross, and they have basically waved their traditional play aside. Ron Greenwood would be turning in his grave, and many WHU supporters, who put up with Big Sam's style to get themselves promoted and to survive their first season back in the PL, would have been expecting a return to their old style. Well, not for another 6 seasons, it appears.
Yeah it is a gamble. But no more than signing Gaston for 12m and I'm assuming around 50k/pwon a long contract. Every signing in football is a risk, you just gotta make sure it pays off! I don't see why a side can't play good passing football behind him, and then utilise his strengths of being a total menace to defenders to create more space. Liverpool was never going to go well for him from day one. But he is still a top striker, and young with time to improve! We are traditionally a low budget Premier league side with modest ambitions and sported red and white stripes!
It's far, far more of a gamble than Gaston (who is on closer to 40k by all reports). If Gaston flops completely, the worst-case is likely taking a loss on his transfer fee; he could be moved with relative ease. If Carroll flops entirely, you're stuck with him for six years unless he takes a massive pay cut to go elsewhere.
I thought big Sam was saying earlier that with the new financial rules he would not be able to sign him. If that was a ploy to bring down his price it did not work. Seems he has a good agent. i would not want him with us but my bigger concern is how it will inflate all the other prices, both transfer and pay. If he is worth that price it raises the price on everyone else. Great if you are selling but not if you are buying like we want to be.
What have our traditions got anything to do with the preferred traditional style of play at West Ham..?
Thought Trixter had been very quiet. If West Ham want to spend a fortune getting ice off the ball that's their look out! I'd hate Saints to play that way even if it got results.
He is a young England international striker, so 15 million is probably about right in the current market as those three attributes always inflate the price. I wouldn't have liked Saints to spend that amount on him as it's not our type of player but West Ham obviously think he fits in with their plans and style of play. I would be a bit worried if I was them though that they have had to spend 15 million (plus wages) to maintain the team they had last year.
Good point Si. It's not strengthening them and you could argue that losing Cole actually has weakened them up front.
It is strange that they released Cole unless they are going to further strengthen up front but that would surely use up most of their transfer budget for the summer in the same area. I would have thought Darren Bent would have been better value, I think I read somehwere that he is available for about 6-8mil.
