We all know he's a serial crock, but the club got £30m for him from Liverpool. Surely it's worth bringing him home on a free transfer this summer when his West Ham contract expires? His wages are expensive but they will never exceed the fee we got from the bin dippers? Worth a punt?
No definitely not. The only deal I'd consider is a pay as you play, obviously he isn't going to accept that. Unfortunately the lad is just about finished and washed up already. I think his agent will be looking for a London move as he is very happy down there.
He's 30 now, and his career has basically been over since he was 23. No way should we bring him back here, he's had a nice holiday at West Ham, £100k+ a week for doing **** all, anyone who offers him anything like that is mental. Regardless of whether he's free, he'll have signing on fee, agent fee and high wages, sod that. Joselu would score more goals for us than him.
Pelligrini wants to extend his stay at West Ham which expires on June 30th. It's currently worth £90k a week. He's a better striker than Joselu every day of the week.
That's mental if they actually want him to stay - he's got 1 goal then season and got 3 last season; our superstar Hoss has 3 this season and got 4 last season. Regardless of how good he is "on his day", he's permanently crocked so it's irrelevant. If West Ham wanna spend next season continuing to pay Carroll a fortune doing **** all, then more fool them.
How about we just go and sign Josef Martinez. Proper goalscorer, stays fit, him and Almiron are like Beardsley/Cole, and he is an international teammate of Rondon. Add in we have already done business with Atlanta once, Rafa has a long standing interest, it seems a sensible approach. We just need to go see Uncle Mike to see if he fancies forking out 25m.
Problem with that is Rondon £15m+ supposedly and Martinez £20-25m at a guess - can't see us shelling out £40+ million on 2 players this summer. If you had the choice who would you take out of those 2? Maybe if Rondon on a part ex with Gayle it could be doable but I doubt we'd sign 2 big money players for one position in one window. Carroll on a free, low wages/fees and tell him to get rid of his agent and put him on a mainly bonus based contract as a back up would work for me with one or the other of the other 2 coming in. He might go for that if he's looking for more familiar surroundings but equally he might be settled in London. But as others are saying better than Joselu without a shadow of a doubt even if he's only got one leg.
It's not beyond the realms for us to swap Gayle plus a couple of Million for Rondon. If we can then ship out Joselu, Manky, Murphy, Eliot, and Darlow for a combined, say £15m ... with wages taken into account the stretch to Martinez won't be as big.
We haven't managed to get rid of Saviet in years yet and he's still on the books, out on loan having played one game for the club since 15/16 - he hasn't played for Bursapor this season either from what I can find. Trying to find someone to take that lot for £15m won't be much easier.
The problem is knowing what we will spend this summer. I don't think Rondon will end up being an issue. They have Murphy and Gayle. Murphy is ****e, and Gayle, though decent, is on his way. I'm sure the two of them in exchange for Rondon will be suitable deal. I know some want to keep Murphy but it would be a massive mistake in my opinion. You can tell by the way he addresses the ball when crossing or passing, he isn't a natural footballer. He's quick but that is about it. We need to bite the bullet early and strong end to the season by him would help us. If we can get Rondon that way then Martinez is more realistic. There is still a massive barrier though as we'd have to break the transfer record again, and persuade Mike to release the funds. Given we have a need for a holding midfield and two wing backs, that ain't gonna be easy.
Here are those either out of contract in the summer or with 12 months left on their contract in the Summer.
The concern for me on there is Woodman. I suspect if he hasn't seen any regular first team action by then we will lose him. Its hard to know where he is at because we've never seen him have a run of games. Obviously at junior England level and out on loan, he's been very very good so you'd imagine interest will be high.