The news that Liverpool are set to swoop for Carlton Cole should be enough to strike fear into the heart of any West Ham fan.
Although he didn’t exactly set the world alight last season, he was still by far the Irons’ best striker, despite a string of injury problems.
To be honest, the reported £12 million bid wouldn’t have been so much of a concern had it happened a month ago. That would have given Avram Grant plenty of time to get the scouts out and reinvest the cash in one, or maybe even two players, capable of replacing Cole.
As it is the bid, which may well be enough to convince West Ham to sell up, raises the prospect of starting the season without a Premier League standard striker.
Benni McCarthy would probably be asked to fill his shoes short-term but, ignoring his impressive debut season at Blackburn, he has scored just 19 goals in 73 games.
The other options would be Freddie Sears (one goal in 42 career appearances), Frank Nouble (no goals in 19 games), Frederic Piquionne (five goals in 34 matches for Portsmouth last term), or the untried Zavon Hines. The side are likely to be a Premier League betting prediction for relegation if they sell their top scorer now and rely on these players as back up.
Hopefully, the cash from any transfer would be reinvested. It would be football suicide not to. However, even if it is the new man will probably struggle to bed in and that could be enough to guarantee a nightmare start. The best football predictions already suggest we’ll struggle, and we can’t afford to make things any worse for ourselves.
Who knows, maybe a miracle will happen and Kieron Dyer and Luis Boa Morte will rise from their sickbeds and bang in the goals…
But that’s not the kind of ridiculous gamble a football club should be taking. £12 million is a lot of money for Cole, but the timing is all wrong and for that reason he must say.
I strongly disagree.
Although I understand your point that he’s the best of a bad bunch, we’ve relied on him for the last 2-3 seasons as our main striker. And we’ve struggled accordingly.
Cole has very few goals in him. I can count on one hand the ammount of shots on target he had last season.
I’ll happily admit there HAVE been games where I’ve said “Cole had a decent game today”. But not one of those “good” performance ratings were based on his being a goal threat. They were all “he got stuck in and ran alot”.
Sooner we ship him and look to play a game that doesnt involve hitting longballs to Cole the sooner we’ll look like a West Ham side again.
Cole is not a West Ham player. Not in a million years.
I wouldnt be surprised to find out we have a replacement lined up pending his sale. I hope to god we have. Another season of relying on Cole will mean yet another season of struggling unecessarily.
I’d rather see Nouble (a VERY similar player) given his chance to develop than sit through another season of Cole’s hitherto unfulfilled “potential”.
Bin him and move on is my shout
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Darren, I agree with you – just to clarify, I didn’t write this article.
We can’t however, imo, get rid of Cole unless we have a replacement. Because if we do that, we run the risk of not having anyone at all.
We really need to strengthen up front.
And we need a proper right back
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I take the “lack of options up front” point on board. It’s valid. But if we’re prepared to risk having no goals from a striker as we clearly are if we’re to rely on Cole again…. then I’d rather take that risk with Nouble and possibly see some improvement in a player than see Cole lumber about and fail to shoot/beat his man/play an effective through ball AGAIN.
And we definitely need a RB. Faubert is toilet. The facty that he was less toilet than usual for parts of last season shouldn’t cloud that. As a Curbs backer I hold my hands up and say Faubert was a shocking buy.
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If all things were equal (which of course, they never are) £12m would be good business.
But, the simple question is, who else do we have to replace Cole? We’ve made some good signings. I’m exited by Hitz the Hammer, and Barrera looks good. The Ajax striker, Suljmani looks a good prospect, but how will he do in the EPL? He wasn’t exactly banging them in for his club, or they’d never have let him go.
We know what we’re going to get with Cole, and who knows, with an improved midfield he may even score more.
A few days before the end of the transfer window is no time to take big risks. You can count on the fingers of 2 hands players who can score 20 goals a season, and we can’t attract or afford to sign any of them. By all means, give our new signings a chance and even give Benni a second chance, but in Cole we have a striker who has scored 10-12 goals a season for us, and if injury free, could score more.
I’d be disappointed if we sell Cole without being certain we have a better alternative. I just can’t see any obvious replacement.
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Would not be surprised to find that he’s already “sold” dependant on the Yakubu deal going through.
And I’d take Yakubu over Cole ANY day of the week.
Even a half fit, misfiring Yakubu offers far more than Carlton does in terms of bite and teeth up front
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