After the disappointing loss against Reading it became clear that we need a capable Premier League striker. At the moment West Ham are carrying a few strikers in Carlton Cole, Andy Carroll, Ricardo Vaz Te and Modibo Maiga. All but Maiga have Premier League experience, however they still struggle to find the net. Carlton Cole is our current in form striker scoring 2 goals in 5 games. It is no hidden truth that West Ham are lacking goals, and maybe that could be because of injury problems in the squad or the fact that Andy Carroll has been disappointing since his arrival from Liverpool. I say disappointing because he has only scored 1 goal in a handful of games for us and also always seems to be injured. We are also yet to know whether Maiga can cut it in the Premier League because of a lack of chances. The same goes for Vaz Te who has been out through injury for a considerable amount of the season. This leaves me saying we need a capable Premier League striker.
It is starting to become increasingly unlikely that Big Sam will sign Andy Carroll come the end of the season so that leaves a spare 17m in the bank. This could mean Sam Allardyce could choose to spend big in January to encourage our survival come the end of the season. There are many rumours linking Loic Remy to West Ham, as always. I don’t know about you but I am very sceptical about a move for the French striker. There is no doubting his striking ability but he is untested in the Premier League arguably the biggest league in the world. There would be a certain amount of pressure on Remy to succeed in the top tier of English football and this could be his downfall.
Another striker we have been linked with is Rickie Lambert. Now I would personally prefer us to go for Lambert than Remy as he is still finding the net since his clubs promotion from the Championship. We all saw what Lambert could do last season in the Championship and finished with 41 goals in all competitions. This season he has scored 8 goals in 19 games picking up 3 assists in the process. Two of these goals were against the two Manchester clubs proving that he can still score against the top teams. However Lambert is 30 years of age now and would probably only have a few more years left in him, so I would only go for him if the price was right.
Lambert would probably be more of a quick fix to our striking problems, whereas Remy would be with us for the long term if we got him that is. At the same time he would cost much more than Lambert and there is much more competition for him most notably from Newcastle. There are many other strikers we could go for, such as Danny Graham, Charlie Austin and Grant Holt. We could even try and excercise Demba Ba’s release clause but a return would be very unlikely.