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As we come in to 2014, most West Ham fans will have one eye on picking up a bargain or two in January.

But not a cheap plasma, PS3 or a dirty weekend in Paris. No, the bargains we will be looking for will be a player or two or three to lift our season and get 2014 off and running without the two David’s digging too deep into their deep pockets.

I for one thought our summer signings would see us not only equal our 10th place finish last season, but even finish a few places higher. Pushing for a place in the Europa league maybe. But a combination of injuries, bad managerial decisions, unfortunate mistakes and a lot of bad luck, has seen our season’s expectations fade and die like West Ham’s infamous bubbles. So what can we do about it?

Well, firstly we can sack the manager and his staff and hire someone at the eleventh hour in the hope we can avoid relegation on the last day, have a club full of unhappy players and hope for more of the same next season.

Or, we can hope against hope that our injured players come back quickly and remain injury free for the remainder of the season and score us bags of goals.

Or, we can delve into the transfer window in January and hope to find a bargain or three.

West ham’s recent transfer dealings have had a mixed reception among the claret and blue faithful. Stewart Downing’s arrival was met with mixed feelings, and the start of his career with West ham wasn’t the greatest, but he is slowly starting to find his feet with us and hopefully he will go on to find the form that forced Liverpool to fork out £20million on him.

Razvan Rat seems to be doing ok in the few chances that he’s had, but sadly Mladen Petric hasn’t been given the game time to prove his worth to the club. Adrian and Danny Whitehead were maybe brought in with one eye on the coming seasons.

That leaves us with Carlton Cole and Andy Carroll. Both we already knew about having been with us the previous season but big thingswere expected of big Andy this season, yet we continue to wait to see him kick a ball in anger.

Most of us have seen him wired up to various machines on Twitter, but that’s not helping us get the results to secure our Premier league status. We need him on the pitch running at defenders, using his bulk & muscle to help the team to grind out a draw or, preferably, a win, but he seems to be struggling to get himself fit again.

David Gold has tweeted that he could be back in the teamin around two to three weeks, so by the time he’s got back to training and got

himself match fit again, it could be more like four to five weeks before we see the Andy Carroll that we enjoyed watching so much last season.

Then there’s the farcical Carlton Cole saga. Discarded like an old rag doll at the end of the last campaign, only to be begged back after failing to secure any of Big Sam’s transfer targets.

So where do we need to strengthen? We could argue everywhere except in goal, but we need to be realistic.

At the time of writing we have no fit centre backs with Winston Reid, James Collins and James Tomkins all out due to injury, so a centre back must be a priority for Big Sam and his transfer team. We have Pelly Ruddock and Leo Chambers from the development squad who could step up if available but an experienced centre back is a must. Possibly even two.

At left-back we are more than covered but right back is more of a worry. Guy Demel and Joey O’brien are okay there but another natural right back addition would help me sleep a bit easier at night.

Central midfield is awash with quality, especially when players are played in their favoured positions. Left midfield is comfortably covered in my opinion and in right midfield we could possibly do with one more player coming in with the added worry of not knowing how long Ricardo Vaz Te will be out for.

Up front we have an injured Andy Carroll who may be back in the next few weeks – but I’ve heard that story before – an unconfident Modibo Maiga, an unused Petric and Carlton Cole.

I, for one, would like to see a pacey second striker to feed off any knock downs from our main front man. Someone of a similar ilk to our previous strikers in Nicky Maynard or Sam Baldock. Or perhaps, dare I say it, Jermain Defoe. Defoe isn’t getting a look in at spurs so maybe it’s time to forgive and forget for the sake of our football club?

It would stick in my throat a bit but I’m sure if I saw him banging goals in wearing the claret and blue again, I could start to forgive him.

Xavi Alonso & Andrea Pirlo are both free agents in June so could be acquired for a nominal fee, although whether we could afford their salaries and whether or not they would consider pulling on our colours is a completely different matter.

Another ex-player who could do a job for us, and who’s not getting a look in at his current club, is Demba Ba. He knows where the goal is, he knows us, we know him and I think, if Chelsea agree to a loan, he should be worth a punt.

No doubt we will be linked with everyone and their dog during January but it’s Sam’s job to sort the bargains out from the non-starters.

Sam had a knack of getting the best out of players in the twilight of their careers when he was Bolton boss. Players like Jay Jay Okocha, Hierro, Djorkaeff et al played with passion and confidence. We need that again.

But one thing is for sure we need improving and we need people who will battle and scrap their way to earn points for this wonderful club of ours. Something we haven’t seen too much of so far this season.

In the mean time, we must have faith in the team, faith in the manager and faith in the chairmen because, if we lose the faith, we’ve lost everything.

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