The club has made it no secret that a ‘big name’ striker is high on it’s transfer priority list this summer.
That’s led to a whole host of strikers being linked with us, the latest being AC Milan and Colombia hitman Carlos Bacca.
So, just as we did last season during our search for a new boss, we thought it’d be fun to boot up our copy of Football Manager 2016 and see how Bacca would do at the club if here were to sign.
We made all the necessary changes to the database before hand, including promotions and relegations and sending loan players back to their parent clubs.
The only glitch is that, on the game, we start in the 1st qualifying round of the Europa League, but we can let that pass.
Then, we flicked Bacca over to the Hammers and simulated a season. Here’s it went down…
Bargain?
The game automatically generated a transfer fee of £21.5million, which sounds about right. Bacca immediately claims the No.70 shirt, much to everyone’s amusement.
Off to the perfect start…
Bacca hits the ground running in the Europa League qualifiers, netting six goals in eight games to help fire us in to the group stages, where we draw Inter Milan, Celta and our ol’ foes from last season – AFC Astra.
And then the Colombian announces himself to the Premier League with the equaliser in an opening day 1-1 draw at Arsenal…
Europa League heroics…
Bacca struggled to continue his Europa League goal scoring exploits from the qualifiers in the group stage, managing to net just twice in six games as we could only manage to finish third behind Inter and Celta.
But he did bag this historic brace away at Inter to secure a shock 2-1 victory for the Hammers, which gave us a glimmer of hope of progressing to the knockout stages. But a 1-0 home loss to Celta in our final group game put paid to that.
Premier League hitman…
Bacca started 37 Premier League games, coming on a sub in just one league outing. And he didn’t disappoint either, scoring 12 and assisting six throughout the season.
However, he did blow hot and cold at times – sometimes going three games with out scoring. His longest drought was just five league games.
Thankfully, a number of other players helped out with the goals throughout the season. More on that later.
But when he turned it on, he turned it on, earning rave reviews in the media. This one stood out over the course of the season…
Oh so close in the FA Cup…
Just like last season, we enjoyed a good run in the FA Cup.
Bacca netted both goals in a 2-0 third round victory over Wolves before scoring his first hat-trick for the club in a 6-0 dismantling of Plymouth in the fourth.
Overall…
Bacca’s contribution was key for the club over the season, finishing with a whopping 25 goals and 10 assists in all competitions.
Dimitri Payet (15) and Manuel Lanzini (13) both made double figures, while Pedro Obiang (9), Michail Antonio (7), Diafra Sakho and Andy Carroll (both 6) also chipped in with the goals.
Our top ten goal scorers in all competitions ended like this…
The highlight of the season, though, has to be the club’s 5th place finish in the Premier League.
There were no signs of bottling our top six bid this time, despite a suffering a post-New Year slump of just two league wins in 10 games between New Year’s Day and the end of February.
That was thankfully followed up by a crucial run of form that saw us lose one of our remaining nine games to secure fifth spot. Elsewhere, it was a return to normal in the top four as Mourinho won the title in his first season as Man United boss and Chelsea returning to the top four.
Defending Champions Leicester could only manage ninth, Jurgen Klopp’s Liverpool failed to qualify for the Europa League again and all three promoted clubs went back down again.
Oh, and we finished above Spurs…
Bacca’s Stats…
The Colombian’s full record ended up looking like this, and will have had fans confident that the £21.5m the club paid for him was well worth it…
Bacca averaged a goal every 164 minutes and registered an assist every 409 minutes.
The club won 34 of the 57 games in which he featured in, which is a 59% win ratio…
To conclude…
Bacca proved to be an inspired addition to the squad and it turned out to be a hugely successful first season at the Olympic Stadium.
For £21.5m it seemed as if Bilic had bagged himself a bargain as Bacca ended the campaign as the club’s top scorer and didn’t pick up a single injury.
Rating – 8/10