Darren Fletcher, Emmanuel Adebayor and the supposed eight other signings that got away.
Yes, its true we signed two promising young players this window in Doneil Henry and Stephen Hendrie (who will join in the summer), but with neither likely to make an instant impact, it feels as if this window could have gone a lot better.
Although I understand the excitement of deadline day deals, I don’t understand why we would claim that eight deals fell through when in the rest of the window we only seemed to pursue one player – Darren Fletcher.
In addition to this, the inevitable collapse of the Adebayor deal due to Daniel Levy once again blocking a West Ham switch led to further frustration around the camp. This then caused Big Sam to call up Carlton Cole and scupper his deal to West Brom in the dying embers of the window, enraging and leading to the big striker to lash out at Allardyce. He was supposedly shouting down the phone: “your f*****g wrecking my career.”
Cole has been a loyal servant throughout the years, and although clearly not the best player within our ranks, I think we all agree that he has served us well. Nevertheless, I do sympathise with Cole and although I would have been gutted to see him leave, I believe Big Sam, the chairman and the rest of the West Ham team should have done the right thing by him and let him go.
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With the talk of either Bafetimbi Gomis or Adebayor joining, the door was clearly shown to Cole. By calling off his chance for first team football to instead make him our fourth choice striker once again appeared cruel.
To add insult to injury, Darren Fletcher, who at one point was extremely close to joining, decided to head to the Hawthorns over our beloved Boleyn. With no additions that can really help us to push on for the rest of this season, I think we could face a tough next few months. With a quote from Allardyce saying “Reid, Collins, Demel, Henry, Poyet and Carroll all lie in our medical room” it doesn’t look too positive; especially with our next feature being the inform Southampton.
If we hadn’t gone into the window not looking too add to the squad, I am confident we would have had more success than we ended up having. We didn’t have a positive approach going into the window and it has ended up costing us massively. The final day of the transfer window comes up and only then we decide to push for signings; certainly a risky strategy that has come back to bite us.
As well as we played against Man United this past Sunday; we still were robbed of the three points due to a quality finish from Dutch midfielder Daley Blind. We were short of a few first team players and maybe our fate would have been different if they were fit. Although their injuries are not something we should dwell upon, you cant help but wonder what the result would have been if we had added a few more quality players in this past window.
I do believe it is important to highlight these issues, and although our summer transfer business was brilliant, I feel there is still room for improvement.
