Valerien Ismael - Manager

West Ham fans pay for the club’s strikers?

 

I think an incoming manager hearing he’s got an £8m 21 year old full international midfielder who’s already had half a season to acclimatise would probably start out thinking that’s a man to build the midfield around at this level. Plus Val's presumably backing himself to help players find something his predecessors couldn't.

 

Considering he's not an automatic starter for Canada, I think even a cursory glance at his career would have suggested that would be fanciful. Besides, Kone has never been an automatic pick for us anyway, either last season or this season (yet)

 

You're missing the point I'm trying to make but I'm not going to labour it.

 

He's only good against us!

 

No (well, indirectly) but think how upset our fans were when we wasted our transfer funds on Andre Gray.

West Ham have done the same and worse pretty much every season since 2010.

 

I think you make a good point. We have undoubtedly made some poor signings but I'm not sure it is that different from other similar clubs and you could probably add teams like Southampton, Bournemouth, Leicester, WHAM, Chelsea and others to the list.

Plus it seems a little selective to miss out players like Igalho, Vydra and of course superstar Isaac Success. I know that the original list said out and out strikers but the list criteria partly depends on the point one is trying to make.

Funnily enough the Sky commentator in midweek talked about the superb pedigree of players we have historically had up front. He would of course have been less aware of all the dross and been thinking of players like Pedro, Ighalo, Dennis and Richarlison. I know Richarlison wasn't a striker for us but when else in all of our history have we had a player pass through our ranks that would go on to star for Brazil up front in a world Cup.

 

It's amazing how poorly most teams manage their recruitment up front - West Ham (as @Supertommymooney pointed out) and Chelsea also victims to poor striker recruitment over the years. Brentford are the only example that immediately spring to mind in absolutely nailing it (going from Maupay > Watkins > Toney). Odd as personally I would've thought that it would be one of the easiest positions to recruit for, but guess the reality is different!

 

Which one? The upper or lower?

 

The point of the original list was to look at who we'd brought in since having the Premier League riches available to us. Ighalo and Vydra were both already in the Pozzo group prior to the purchase of Watford too which further weakens the link to strikers we've sourced and brought in.

 

It does look pretty grim. TBH looking at the strikers we had when we were very much the pauper boys among the rich men of the Premier League, I'd take the other King over all of the strikers we've had since promotion in 2014/15, with the exception of Ighalo in the first half 0f 2015/16 and maybe Deeney from that season, and Heidar (who was useful for Fulham and QPR in the top flight) over all of the rest except possibly Dennis and Welbeck.

 

That makes sense, thanks for the clarification. I guess my point is that there are maybe different ways of looking at it. But regardless i don't disagree with the original point that we have bought a load of duffers when we had access to premier league reaches.

 

Top of Ligue 1 tonight! The one who got away lol

 

Who's that ?

 

Sir Jim Ratcliffe - he's investing the rest of his £billions in Man Utd instead of us ffs!!

 

God, I'm fuming we didn't get him, because he'd definitely swap a life in the sun in the south of France for rainy Hertfordshire!

 

I thought it was established that he rejected us, no? Not much point getting too upset about What Ifs, when he clearly had better options on the table.

 

I think we should just swallow our pride and get him over now. Promotion isn’t put of the question yet.

 

Haha very true. And no need to address me with such reference by the way my friend. Malt will suffice!

We rejected Farioli by the way, not the other way round. We wouldn’t meet all his demands. Although ironically we then gave VI everything he asked for.

I’m over our stupidity but it’s natural that I keep one eye on how he’s doing, and he has certainly made a very good start at Nice.

 

Surely it's one of the most difficult? I guess it's easy to know what to look for in terms of data, but unless you're buying from a lower quality league, surely a good striker is going to cost money?

 

How many left boll0cks do you have?

 

Is there a source for that? All I can see is the below:

"The Athletic claimed that whilst preliminary discussions were held, Farioli was keeping his options open as a whole host of clubs were interested in his services at the time."

"According to Football Insider, the Hornets had been in talks to bring the Italian, who has recently spent two years at Turkish outfit Alanyaspor with a 41.67 per cent win ratio, and the 34-year-old was the first-choice for the hierarchy.

However, those negotiations broke down at some point and Fariol is now not in contention at all to arrive in Hertfordshire next season."

Andrew French also says, from Manga, that we were never even in discussions with Farioli.

 

Depends if he suffers from Polyorchidism

 

Yeah there's gonna be a few pros and cons, with cost probably the biggest factor. That being said - the likes of Chelsea and West Ham have spent fortunes on strikers that have been crap for them!

 

Do you think there’s a risk of sometimes over-complicating it?

I doubt data ever had Deeney, Graham, King, Ighalo etc being as good as they were.

 

On the other hand, if data were a big thing back then, would another club have hoovered them up?

 

I’ve not read this thread throughout so if this point has already been made or debated then apologies.

Just a quick one to say I like the fact VI doesn’t have favourites, everyone appears to get treated the same regarding rule breaking and performances.

 

Apart from Healy who never gets a chance despite the shortcomings over the other strikers.

 

Perhaps he's even worse in training, or way down in his fitness stats, or doesn't fit the tactics ? There's got to be a reason he's not picked other than the other strikers are VI's favourites ?

 

Yeah everyone said that when Walt wouldn’t pick Doucoure or when QSF played the same players over and over again.

 

Though even when Healey and Rajovic were on the pitch at the same time it was Rajovic who scored and I'm not sure Healey even had a touch in the attacking third.

 

Healey came on in the 87th minute, Rajovic played 30 mins.

 

Fully understand picking Bayo considering he's become a pressing demon for us, and Rajovic has got off to a good goalscoring start for us, but in the long term Healey should be at least be above Rajovic