James Collins, known to West Ham fans as ‘ginge’ hasn’t been having the best of times on the pitch recently, but is continuously called into action due injuries to Tonks and last season Reid.
We had signs in pre-season that he wasn’t quite up the challenge this year despite scoring a great penalty in the shoot-out, which we could have done with on Saturday but it wasn’t meant to be.
At our home pre-season game he was at fault for both goals we conceded, which left us dangerously close to going through pre-season without a win but luckily skills for youngsters Lee and Burke gave fans reasons to be happy going into the new season. Whether it was down to lack of concentration or just pure mistakes there was only one person we could blame. It makes it even more difficult to think about the goals he conceded when our usual and first choice defence is so strong, if we were able to play Adrian, Reid, Tonks, Cresswell and Demel/Jenkinson then these problems wouldn’t occur.
We do need a back-up centre half and now it will probably have to be on loan but due to the amount of injuries we get it’s vital. I think with more experience Burke could be good enough but with Sam he probably won’t get the chance. For the first round of the capital one cup I would suggest should Tonks be fit for the weekend that Collins and Burke start in defence and fingers crossed we can go back to our preferred defence that made up Adrian’s famous wall last season.
Should the club keep hold keep hold of Collins? I’m not sure, I think we will but need more cover as he’s definitely not up to the standard that the Premier League is at.