Wandering Welshman

Of all the injury concerns today Manchester City have the two biggest: Robinho and Craig Bellamy. I find Bellamy to be a fascinating player. Every transfer window his name comes up as being able to fill some club's "need". Which in most cases tends to mean a proven goal scorer.

And while Bellamy has scored in the Premier League for every club he's played for I would hardly consider him a prolific scorer. You would have to go back to his time with Norwich City in the old First Division to find a strike rate that is considered close to prolific.

At Newcastle he was consistent. Here are those numbers:

01-02: 27 appearances / 9 goals
02-03: 29 appearances / 7 goals
03-04: 16 appearances / 5 goals
04-05: 21 appearances / 7 goals

He leaves to go play for Celtic (04-05: 12 appearances / 7 goals) and returns to Blackburn where he has an outstanding season under Mark Hughes. By outstanding I mean 27 appearances and 13 goals. Along comes a transfer window and Liverpool felt he could fill their lack of goals need and they sign him.

A "dream move" for Bellamy at the time he was given plenty of chances (27 appearances) but did not continue the form he was in with Blackburn (7 goals). He featured in 12 matches in Europe and netted twice.

He will forever be remembered at Liverpool for taking a golf club to John Arne Riise while the squad was off on holiday/training. This incident made it impossible for Bellamy to stay with the team as he was eventually for the off to West Ham. I maintain to this day that Riise was responsible for Liverpool losing the Champions League semi-final clash to Chelsea because of his own goal. So, in that regard Bellamy was quite right to tee off on the Norwegian.

FYI: I'm getting all this from Wikipedia (except the taking of golf club to Riise). I don't have some bizarre storage of knowledge regarding Craig Bellamy.

Moving right along, over 21 appearances with West Ham he scored 7 times. Another transfer window and another club in need of scoring. Add to that the fact that West Ham are in dire need of cash. This time the richest club in the world - Man City - comes calling and through 5 appearances he has 3 goals. An impressive early return.

I'm only writing about this because I want to avoid writing about Manchester United's inevitable pummeling of Newcastle and moving 7 points clear.

Hughes was able to get the best out of Bellamy during their time together at Blackburn and the hope will be a healthy Bellamy will produce the same at City. Some people will argue his goals per season is impressive and that he is more than just an average striker. I would certainly be open to hearing those arguments.

I totally expect Hughes to be fired after the season. And the owners of the club plan on spending on big names. Which means Bellamy will move on once again.