West Ham spent a lot of time, very publicly, over the summer looking for a striker. Some targets passed them by. Others were taken by other teams. Did we make the right decision in bringing in Zaza?
West Ham’s options
This summer we had a number of targets that all didn’t come through. Batshuayi was supposedly hours away before Chelsea snapped him up. Bacca was apparently only days away numbers of times, but nothing happened. And so it came to pass that Zaza joined the club from Juventus.
It wasn’t the boards first choice. It wasn’t the fans first choice. By the sounds of it we weren’t even Zaza’s first choice, but can he be the right man for us.
With strikers they tend to come in a number of different moulds. The finisher, like Defoe. The target man like Carroll. The linker, like Deeney. Where does Zaza fit in to all of this?
How did Zaza compare to other Premier League strikers on his West Ham debut? pic.twitter.com/XRbLXOGviD
— Green St. Hammers (@GreenStHammers) September 13, 2016
The Stats
Well having a little look here, he doesn’t fit any real mould. Only having one shot on target he doesn’t fit into the same category as the top strikers. He will need to improve on that if he is to be the goalscorer we want him to be.
It is his link up play. In this one match he created three chances, and that is good for a striker. The others on this list barely make one per match, and Defoe has none. If he’s not going to score the goals for us, he is certainly going to be involved in the play.
The last stat is the final third passes, and he ranks well here. I like that in a striker, because a lot of good goalscorers can be very absent when not involved in front of goal, and that means the team is carrying them when it’s not going well. Zaza doesn’t seem content with that, and that’s a good thing with such a mobile forward line.
Conclusion
It was only a debut, but it was a promising one. If he continues in this vein he could be a top player for us. Without a real prolific goalscorer we were still one of the top scorers in the league last year, and if Zaza can pick up a few whilst feeding Payet, Lazini, Antonio, Feghouli and Ayew then we have picked up a real gem.
What do you think? Is he the striker West Ham have been after all summer? Or will we be glad to see the back of him when the time comes?
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