Premier League

Cascarino raves about Haller in Arnie comparison

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Tony Cascarino opted to compare West Ham attacker Sebastien Haller with ex-Hammers forward Marko Arnautovic ahead of Manuel Pellegrini’s side taking on Bournemouth.

The former Premier League striker shared how he thought Haller leads the line brilliantly for West Ham but claimed he didn’t have the same amount of flair or brilliance that Arnautovic brought to the table.

However, Cascarino quickly pointed out that Haller was a far bigger team player than the Austrian attacker and seemed to favour the Frenchman as a result.

“He leads the line brilliantly,” said Cascarino on talkSPORT (6:28am, Saturday, September 28th).

“Obviously, I don’t think he has the same amount of flair or brilliance that Arnautovic could bring to the table, but what he is, is a far bigger team player than Arnautovic.

“He can chip in with goals but you look at West Ham and you just think ooo.”

OPINION

Arnautovic left the London Stadium in the summer to join Chinese side Shanghai SIPG and Haller arrived to clearly cover the loss of the 30-year-old forward. After all, despite all the speculation about his future, Arnautovic was the Hammers’ top-scorer in his 2018/19 campaign and was clearly the club’s main attacking threat as he got 10 goals as well as four assists in his 28 league outings. The 30-year-old at times was fantastic to watch, but it’s fair to say Haller hitting the ground running has helped make Arnautovic’s exit irrelevant. The 25-year-old has not only scored three goals in his first five league outings and generally looked to be a handful based on the fact he has averaged 2.4 shots per game (Source: WhoScored), but his presence had led to him helping his teammates flourish. Haller has won 6.8 aerial duels on average per game so far, and him being a threat in the air as well as being able to knock the ball down has seen chances fall to the likes of Felipe Anderson and Andriy Yarmolenko. While Arnautovic did get an acceptable amount of assists last season, you feel if he had to put his body on the line in order for his teammate to score a goal, he’d have been less willing to do that compared to Haller.

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