Ryan Fredericks is now a West Ham United player as Manuel Pellegrini starts the rebuilding of a Hammers side which by common consent needs surgery.
The official site announced the news after ClaretandHugh had brought the news a couple of hours earlier and were quick off the mark with the first words from the former Fulham right back.
Speaking to www.whufc.com the 25 year old said: “It’s amazing for this deal to finally happen. know we’ve been speaking about it for a while and trying to get things in place and finally, we’ve got it over the line. I’m just buzzing to be here.
“West Ham United is one of the biggest clubs in the Premier League. Everyone knows the history of West Ham and there’s a lot of factors that brought me to the club.
“Obviously, it’s an exciting time for West Ham. The club have just brought in a new manager in Manuel Pellegrini and everyone knows his CV and what he has done in England before and in other leagues as well. I’m sure I can learn a lot from him.
Picture via www.whufc.com
“It just felt like, for the next step of my career, I would be best suited coming here.”
Manager Pellegrini has welcomed Fredericks to the club and is looking forward to working with his first acquisition since becoming West Ham boss.
Although on holiday in South America, the Chilean said: “I am very pleased to welcome Ryan to West Ham United as our first signing this summer. He joins having had a successful season with Fulham and is a player who will bring great qualities to our squad.
“He has good experience, with more than 150 senior appearances already but, at 25, he is still a young player with his best years ahead of him.
“Ryan has good character, is hungry to succeed, and has shown me that he has great desire to be a West Ham United player. I look forward to working with him.”
Great news . Pellegrini is definitely a manager to attract players .
That’s good that he wants to learn from pellegrini. He should please those who like to watch a fast runner and hopefully he manages to avoid pulling his hamstring long enough for pellegrini to teach him some football. Meanwhile pellegrini has been talking to the media in Chile and saying how he would like to “loosen up” the owner into buying a great player that will help to attract other top players to the club. That’s the only downside of the Fredericks signing for me is that he is the first signing. Great players will be looking round the world to see who pellegrinis first signing is and see that a typical West Ham signing is a player from a lower league. Hopefully that doesn’t deter them.
I wouldn’t say Fredericks came to us because of Pellegrini but I’m sure it didn’t hurt. I personally think his signing was agreed in principle well before Pellegrini came on the scene. I’m sure pellegrini would have said if he didn’t want Fredericks though. We will see how he views the signing when the season starts by whether he prefers to play Zabaleta or not. I imagine the next announcement will now be the selling of Byram.