Kamara: should we have seen this coming?

We don't know how much Diomansy Kamara cost Fulham. The press reported £6 million, a figure that has since been questioned and is probably dependent on certain performance targets being met. Whatever those performance targets are they probably will not be met, as Kamara has not played well.

There have been high-points: nobody will forget his last minute bicycle kick to save the game against Spurs, and he scored a nice tap in against Blackburn to cap off a lovely team move. He has also had a couple of goals disallowed.

But too often he hasn't looked interested. His awareness of teammates is about as bad as it can be for a player in this division, but he doesn't make up for this by surging past defenders and causing havoc that way. No, the typical Kamara event is to receive the ball, put his head down, run in the general direction of the penalty box, then either get tackled or fall over (or both).

I'm being a bit mean - he clearly has some ability - but with big price tags come big expectations. We expected more.

What interests me is why we bought him in the first place. The quick answer is "he scored a lot of goals last year in the Championship". He had previously failed to make an impact in the Premiership with Portsmouth, but we were told that this was in the past, he was incorrectly used as a winger, and that things would be better now.  They aren't. Again: should we have seen this?

With the benefit of hindsight, I think so. Let's have a look at what happened at West Brom last year (Name/games/goals):

Diomansy Kamara    35    21
Kevin Phillips    34    19
Nathan Ell'ton    18    10
Jason Koumas    36    9
Zoltan Gera    29    5
John Hartson    14    5

This was not a team that had problems scoring goals. 

Now look at this year's version:

Kevin Phillips    15    15
Robert Koren    20    7
Ishmael Miller    13    7
Roman Bednar    8    6
Andrade T'xeira    19    5

Already they have five players who have scored more than five times, and Kevin Phillips is blasting them in at a goal a game. Does anyone think Kevin Phillips is ripe for plucking back into the top division?   

Kamara has pace and Phillips does not, so you might say that Kamara is projectable, that he would better adapt to the higher level of competition.  But what these numbers say to me is that West Brom have a great system going, that they can score a lot of goals because of that system. Kamara was the main beneficiary last year, Phillips this. Which is not to underestimate their individual accomplishments - they have scored those goals - but to suggest that whatever is happening at West Brom is making it a good place to be a centre-forward, and consequently is perhaps making West Brom forwards look better than they really are. 

Or put another way, if Kamara had been playing for Ipswich last year we wouldn't be having this discussion. Separating team and individual performance is not at all easy and, if I may be so bold, I think Fulham got this wrong.