West Ham United are taking a risk as they have to rely on Callum Wilson and Niclas Füllkrug as their only strikers this season.

Hammers boss Graham Potter has taken a risk in the transfer window by deciding not to sign a striker this summer. The Irons will now have to make it till January with two injury prone forwards.

Niclas Füllkrug has started the season in the number nine role, however, despite a positive pre-season, he has started the competitive season in bad form. The German International has been bullied by centre-backs in all three of his starts and is already being outperformed by Callum Wilson, despite not starting a match yet.

Wilson is the one providing the hope for a goalscoring striker this season and that says it all really. The 33-year-old striker arrived to a lot of hate and criticism of both the player himself and David Sullivan’s decision to sign him. However, after some promising cameos of the bench and an excellent headed finish against Nottingham Forest, the fans are actually quite excited about what Wilson can bring to the side.

However, despite Wilson’s great start and Niclas Füllkrug’s pedigree, there is one massive problem with the two strikers other than their age, and that’s their injury records.

Both forwards have had poor injury records their whole careers and that didn’t change at all last season. The German missed 28 matches with achillies and hamstring problems, while the Englishman missed 29 matches with hamstring and back injuries. If they both miss anywhere near that amount of games this term, West Ham could be in real trouble.

There are three striker options for the Hammers if Füllkrug and Wilson end up being injured at the same time, these are Jarrod Bowen, Lucas Paqueta and Callum Marshall.

We’ve obviously seen than Jarrod Bowen can score goals from striker, he knows where to be in the box to find space. However, when he plays up front we really miss him on the right side. We  have seen this already this season, Bowen made little impact as a striker alongside Füllkrug against Sunderland and Chelsea. But he moved back to the right against Forest and played brilliantly, especially in the second half.

Lucas Paqueta has played up front for us at times, and he does have all the attributes to play there. He’s strong, he can hold it up, is pretty good in the air and is a good finisher. However, like Bowen, we will miss him in his best position. Our midfield is our weakest point in the team, even though we’ve signed Fernandes now, moving Paqueta out of the midfield will really limit the creativity.

This leaves us with the last option, Callum Marshall. The 20-year-old Northern Ireland International is highly rated by the club and was involved in pre-season after a successful loan at League One Huddersfield last season. Marshall featured quite a bit for the Hammers in pre-season, he scored in our opener against Grasshopper, started against Everton in Chicago and came off the bench vs Bournemouth in Atalanta.

Graham Potter clearly rates Marshall enough to give him game time and to decide to not loan him out for this season. So, it will be good to see him trust him a bit more, he was banned for Sunderland and he was on the bench against Chelsea.

However, he wasn’t on the bench for Forest as he opted for Summerville instead. It would be good to see Potter go a bit more attacking on the bench, leave one of the midfielders like Irving and Rodriguez off the bench and have Marshall on the bench alongside Wilson/Füllkrug. This will get him a whole lot more prepared to step up if he is called upon.