OPINION
Stan Collymore claimed that West Ham couldn’t rely on Javier Hernandez to be their primary goalscoring outlet for a whole season due to his age.
The outspoken pundit shared that the Hammers forward was an interesting player after he scored in West Ham’s 1-1 draw with Brighton, and he suggested Manuel Pellegrini couldn’t trust him to deliver the goods across a whole season due to his age.
“Chicharito this is an interesting one, I’ll ask you a simple question Hugh, the answer for me is no by the way…” said Collymore on The Last Word with Collymore (21mins, 30secs on podfollow.com).
“Can you rely on him for a whole season at his age as your primary goalscoring outlet?”
Hernandez who is 31-years-old led the line for the Hammers against the Seagulls on Saturday, due to Sebastien Haller being unavailable due to injury, and scored with his only shot of the match after only touching the ball 17 times. (Source: WhoScored)
While ideally, you would like a striker to see the ball more often than Hernandez did on Saturday, at the end of the day, all you can ask for from your forward is that he converts the chances that come his way and that’s exactly what he did in his latest outing.
If the 31-year-old continues to get good service, as Manuel Lanzini provided in a moment of magic on Saturday, his age isn’t going to stop Pellegrini being able to trust him to fire home the ball.
Hernandez may be the wrong side of 30, but his injury record doesn’t imply he can’t cope with games coming thick and fast across this season.
The 31-year-old has only missed a total of 30 games due to injury, as per Transfermarkt, throughout his career and that suggests he is probably in better shape than most players his age that have been dealt unlucky blows with injuries.
Collymore could have questioned Hernandez’s ability to be the Hammers primary scoring outlet on the basis of his scoring record for the club, he has scored just 17 goals in 63 outings, but he chose to focus on his age.
Also in case, Collymore didn’t realise, fellow Premier League side Brighton have been relying on 35-year-old Glenn Murray to provide their goals in recent seasons, and he hasn’t let them down.
The Brighton striker scored 13 league goals in his 2018/19 campaign and 12 in his 2017/18 campaign, so surely Hernandez, who is younger and has played in prestigious competitions such as Champions League, is still capable of being relied upon if it comes to that.
