You wouldn’t know it based on West Ham United’s recent transfer activity, but there are still bargains in the market if you know where to look.

One of those bargains was leading the line – and opening the scoring – for Blackburn Rovers on Saturday, when Tony Mowbray ensured Scott Parker’s wait for a win will drag on throughout the international break.

While Middlesbrough were leapfrogged in top spot by Birmingham City later in the day following two games without a win, Will Lankshear’s costly, injury-enforced absence has opened the door for Gudjohnsen to close the gap in the Golden Boot race. The Icelander is now second, three goals behind Lankshear, and level with Jack Moylan after the Cardiff City talisman rifled in a first-half hat-trick on Parker’s Hammers debut three days earlier.

Jarrod Bowen, on seven, is already trailing Lankshear by six. If you doubled the league tallies of Taty Castellanos and Pablo Felipe, meanwhile, you’d still be one short of Konstantinos Mavropanos’ five.

Taty Castellanos and Pablo epitomise West Ham United’s big-money problems

Between them, Taty and Pablo have scored twice in the Championship across a combined 1,386 minutes. Taty has missed as many penalties as he’s scored goals. Pablo took eight months to break his duck in league action.

One of Parker’s first acts after succeeding Nuno Espirito Santo was to dump Pablo out of the squad. The former Gil Vicente ace wasn’t even on the bench at Cardiff or Blackburn.

And Parker was clearly unimpressed by Taty’s contributions – or a lack thereof – in South Wales. Following an entirely forgettable 45 minute showing, the £27 million signing was replaced by Joel Piroe both at the break in Cardiff and from the start in Lancashire. Setting up Arne Engels to spark a Hammers comeback from 3-0 down, and then scoring their consolation three days later, Piroe will surely be keeping his place in the XI when club football returns in a fortnight’s time.

When you consider that Taty and Pablo cost West Ham a combined £47 million, coupled with the fact that Blackburn paid just £1.75 million to sign Gudjohsen from Genk, the struggles of West Ham’s misfiring forwards look even more stark.

Taty’s stats are dreadful as Andri Gudjohnsen fires Blackburn to a big win

Blackburn took a punt on the Icelander – who had a spell in Barcelona’s academy when his dad Eidur played at the Camp Nou – back in 2025. The £1.75 million signing had scored only five goals in 32 Belgian league matches in his final season with Genk.

Following a semi-respectable seven in his maiden Championship campaign, Rovers’ faith in the Westminster-born 24-year-old is now paying dividends.

“Every team needs a centre-forward who gets numbers, that make wins,” Mowbray said in October. He’s got to strive to get to 20 goals this season and hopefully beyond that. “I like Andri. A really, really good football player. A stereotypical centre-forward who knows where the back of the net is.”

Gudjohsen has ten goals from an XG of just 4.1. His conversion rate of 50 per cent is the best in the league.

Taty’s conversion rate is a staggeringly poor 2.9 per cent, in contrast. Lower even than Pablo’s 7.7. Taty’s one goal has come from an XG of 3.5 – inflated, of course, by the penalty he missed in the dying seconds of a 2-1 home defeat by Charlton Athletic in August.

At least Piroe – four goals from an XG of four and a conversion rate of 17 per cent – offers reason for optimism.