The 3 Musketeers Can't Return Soon Enough For West Ham

Well maybe they know more about Muscat than being Musketeers, but Manuel Lanzini, Andy Carroll and Winston Reid were, and have been, major players for West Ham United. Much has been made of the club's recent massive investment in players and their current lack of success, but it should be remembered that much of anything decent that happened in the last few seasons occurred when one or all of them were playing.

Quite simply, the defence has been appalling, although against Wolves they had got their act together only to be undone by a porous midfield, but the defence has been lacking a 'wise head', and in the absence of Winston Reid and with the departure of James Collins wise heads are few and far between, Reid is also a 'proper warrior' who posseses a steely determination that has been much missed. Declan Rice has stepped up to the plate, but his future is surely in the role of centre half, his commanding stature and quick thinking have the making of a future captain.

Onto the midfield, when Manuel Pellegrini agreed to become West Ham's new manager he knew the board were going to back him with a not inconsderable transfer kitty, but he also knew he had the 'little jewel' known as Manuel Lanzini, a player who 'El Tel' had planned to place his entire team formation and strategy around, unfortunately it was not to be due to the dreadful injury Lanzini picked up while training with the Argentine squad ahead of the World Cup. Prior to his injury their was all sorts of speculation about Barcelona and Liverpool looking to sign Lanzini, that's how good a layer he is, and how big a loss his injury was to Pellegrini.

Finally we reach the enigma that is Andy Carroll, on his day probably the best header of the ball in the world of professional football, but also one of the most injury plagued players ever known in recent history. Carroll is beginning his latest comeback, jesus he has had more come backs than Staus Quo and Elton John among others! We at the Org are reliably informed that his past 'toxic' misdemeanours are behing him now, sadly the collateral effect of not having looked after himself properly before he 'setteld down' has come back to haunt him and Hammers fans in equal measure, except he still picks up £80,000 per week for his troubles!

Reid, Lanzini and Carroll are all superb players on their day, but collectively they represent the back bone of a strong team, unfortunately their bones and bits aren't strong enough. Many fans would love to see the return of the three Musketeers, and at this point we would gain loads of extra cloumn inches by cutting and pasting people's social media comments, but we won't it is a cheap form of vacuous bullshit! Despite having signed so many new players, either or all of them could ultimately end up making a massive difference to Hammers'season, like it or not, they have been sorely missed. - Ed