In a week where we’ve heard of old West Ham boy Rio Ferdinand offering his experience in making the club perform a little better, another old boy has chipped in with what he thinks.
Whilst talking on the Alan Brazil Sports Breakfast on TalkSport, Redknapp believes that West Ham should now build their side around Andy Carroll. “West Ham, and I’m not making excuses for Slaven, but they’ve had horrific injuries,” he said, and he believes that West Ham should now stick with a no-nonsense back-to-basics approach and build the team around him.
“I think he needs to get Carroll back in the team and go a little route one.” Which is hard to disagree with given the Hammers’ position in the table. A different approach would be welcome, given that we could see an impending relegation battle. But Redknapp seems to be quite relaxed about the situation as he also said on the show that he ‘doesn’t see them getting relegated’.
Now, this actually goes against what Slaven Bilic has said previously about our former most expensive player. In August, he was on record saying that “the worst situation is when you plan, then you can’t count on him. All the time.” This is obviously related to his torrid injury record and not his abilities as a player, coming on against Arsenal after spending essentially the whole campaign on the sidelines and getting your name on the score sheet is a very good accomplishment.
West Ham sit in the relegation zone and up until recently have had no striker either score, or assist, which is an absolutely dreadful statistic. Carroll maintains that he is our elusive ’15-20 goal man’ and if he can maintain his fitness for a whole season it would be very interesting to see.
