The Sky Sports pundit was speaking ahead of West Ham United’s Premier League clash with Arsenal.
West Ham manager Slaven Bilic
Alan McInally has claimed that West Ham United have a ‘big problem’ regarding their dependence on centre forward Andy Carroll.
The Sky Sports pundit, famed for a playing career with Celtic, Aston Villa and Bayern Munich, was speaking on the platform’s ‘Gillette Soccer Special’ as part of a panel discussion previewing the Hammers’ encounter with Arsenal – with the former Scotland international focusing on West Ham’s reliance on the injury-prone front man.
When discussing whether West Ham look to Andy Carroll too much, McInally responded by saying, ‘I think that’s the biggest problem for me…there’s absolutely no question about it. If Andy doesn’t play, I think they struggle for goals…if Andy doesn’t score, who’s chipping in with that?”
Carroll, a £15m signing from Liverpool in 2012, has scored seven Premier League goals for West Ham this term – but has only featured in 16 top flight matches in 2016-17. As indicated by the BBC, Carroll’s scoring rate of a goal every 166 minutes played is by far the most prolific for any of the Hammers’ first team regulars – with Michail Antonio closest to Carroll with a goal every 262 minutes.
West Ham United’s Andy Carroll celebrates
When prompted to provide his opinion on any sort of variety for West Ham’s source of goals, McInally continued, “…you’re looking for the likes of Lanzini and Antonio and Ayew, but none of them are really chipping in – and if Andy doesn’t score, it looks as though at the moment that West Ham haven’t got a clue…and I think that it’s a big problem for Bilic, I really do, to get them out of this thing of ‘we just go through Andy Carroll‘ – it has to be more than that.”
Summer signing Jonathan Calleri has failed to add goals since joining from Deportivo Maldonado, whilst Simone Zaza left after just a matter of months without scoring a goal, and it’s imperative that West Ham find a new striker this summer to take some pressure off the injury-prone Carroll.
Is Alan McInally correct with his suggestion that West Ham United are too reliant on Andy Carroll? Leave your thoughts in the comments section below.
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