Slaven Bilic has hailed the impact of his ‘unbelievable’ striker Andy Carroll after his double helped fire the Hammers to victory at Middlesbrough on Saturday.
The No9 twice gave his team the lead in a see-saw first half, before Jonathan Calleri’s late strike sealed a 3-1 success – a fifth for his team in their last seven Premier League outings.
Since returning to fitness at the start of December, Carroll has scored five goals in ten games, with three of those strikes coming in unstoppable performances against Crystal Palace and Boro over the past two weeks.
Bilic believes in this form Carroll in unstoppable and says the only player he can recall with such a devastating skillset when attacking the ball was his former Everton teammate Duncan Ferguson.
He explained: "When I was playing at centre back I always felt it was up to me rather than down to the centre forward when the ball comes in.
“With Andy it’s different, whoever plays centre back it’s more up to Andy. It’s unbelievable.
“I played with Duncan Ferguson at Everton, and marked him when I was at West Ham, and he is the only one I can compare. He’s got everything, he’s tall, he attacks the ball, he has great timing. Everything.
“Now he looks fit, he’s training. Of course we are managing him, but we are not nursing him like maybe before. He is training as much as possible, without going over the line. For me it’s the only way to stay fit, by training.
“He is 100 percent fit now. He has been training for a couple of months, and there is no reason to think the best period of his career won’t come now.
“He is at a great age, he is happy, he’s smiling, he’s settled down. He’s happy with us and there’s no reason why he shouldn’t enter five years of his best football now.”