Sam Allardyce has recently confirmed that we only aim to make one more signing this summer and that signing will be a striker. With recent events from newspaper rumours linking us with Salomon Kalou to David Gold himself confirming on Twitter that he rates the Ivorian international very highly; it seems the former Chelsea man could become our final signing of the summer.
I would love to see Kalou pull on a West ham shirt and play a formidable role next season in our quest to improve on last year’s top ten finish. He has the pace and goal scoring record (when played upfront) to really add to our side. I have heard many people say that he doesn’t score enough goals to be worthy of playing upfront for us. I disagree. Kalou has scored 88 goals in 262 league games and although many will say that simply is not good enough, you have to understand that for 156 of those games he was being played as a winger for Chelsea and still managed to score 36 times. Take away his time at Chelsea where he was being played out of position and you will see that he has scored 52 goals in 106 league games when playing as a striker for his other clubs. That’s nearly a goal almost every other game. At international level where he has been used in both a central striker role or as a winger while Didier Drogba played upfront he has scored 21 goals in 57 games; that’s better than a goal every three games! I cannot remember the last time we had a striker with such a good goal scoring record and maybe playing off of Andy Carroll could see that improve still.I refuse to judge Kalou on his time at Chelsea as he was almost every game played out of position or didn’t play a full 90 minutes. You cannot blame a player for not scoring goals when they are either not on the pitch or not playing in their most effective position.
Not only would we be signing a player with great experience of the English game but we will also be getting him for fee way below his true value. It has been reported that Kalou has a release clause in his contract at Ligue 1 side Lille of around £2.5 million! You will struggle enormously to find a better player for that fee and who is also keen on a move to England. Brazillian striker Fred is available for even less at £1.7 million but it appears that he would prefer to stay in South America.
With David Gold saying how he believes Kalou would “compliment our system” and David Sullivan saying during his Q & A on his sons Twitter account that we hope to sign a striker within 10 days, could Salomon Kalou be about to swap France for East London?