On Monday night, time was called on one of the most underwhelming transfer windows there has been. Not just West ham fans, but fans across the board, were left asking themselves whether they should have done more business or even better business. I get the feeling from our fans that it’s more the disappointment in failing to push the squad on. We have seen Ricardo Vaz Te leave on a free and Mauro Zarate shipped off to QPR on loan. Alongside this we have seen a load of youth team players have their contracts mutually terminated as an overhaul of the academy took place. In return we have seen Doneil Henry arrive into the club, a player who is reportedly not going to be ready for the first team until next season.
In many aspects there was no pressure on us to do business like there has been in previous winter transfer windows. We’ve not got any gaping holes in our squad and we’re not staring relegation straight in the face. So as a club we could sit back a bit more and see what was available before making our move. There is nothing wrong with this approach in this situation at all. However we saw a draw back on this on deadline day itself.
A gaping hole appeared in our squad in the form of a central defender. Now I’ve been critical over Gold and Sullivan on many factors but the lack of finding a fourth choice centre back is on I tend to align with them on. It’s very hard to find a player who will join and be happy to know they’ll only be playing 5-10 games a season and with strict financial fair play rules in force it’s also hard to justify having a player on the wage bill on good money who will hardly feature. However on deadline day the club seemingly decided to make a defender their priority.
Kara Mbodj, Younes Kaboul and Sylvain Distin all seemed close to joining at one stage or another but all three failed to join. My question would be why did we leave it so late to seemingly start this business? From what we’ve been told there are no serious injuries to any of our three central defenders, we may have to cope with a makeshift defence for a game or two, but we’re not in a position where we should be panicking. If it only takes a couple of injuries to get us panicking then why did we not get this business done earlier?
The other bit if business we seemingly tried to do on deadline day was to bring in a striker. Emmanuel Adebayor having his moved blocked by the chairman of our now direct rivals Daniel Levy. The one positive thing to come out of deadline day was to know we’ve got Tottenham running scared.
It’s become a tradition for us to sign a striker in January under Gold and Sullivan. Benni McCarthy, Mido, Robbie Keane, Nicky Maynard, Marco Borriello and Marouane Chamakh all having joined in previous windows. I’d like to think it was just Gold and Sullivan keeping this tradition going but I can’t help wondering if the injury Andy Carroll experienced against Liverpool is worse than the 2 week layoff that has been reported. I guess we’ll find out.
I would be remiss to not talk about Carlton Cole in this winter window round up. A player that most fans have grown to love, he may not be the greatest player to ever have graced the turf but he is one of us. You can’t help but love the guy, so it’s disappointing to read about the fallout from his collapsed move to West Brom. It’s going to be hard for him to get his head back in order I feel, but if Andy Carroll’s injury is worse than reported we’ll need our saviour to step up once again and fire us to FA Cup glory.
