When weighing up the merits of recruitment under a director of football versus West Ham’s usual approach, a few familiar names came to mind.
Felipe Anderson, Sébastien Haller and Kalvin Phillips were obvious examples. But after reading Matt’s piece earlier, it struck me that James Ward-Prowse is probably a more relevant — and recent — case.
A signing that made sense at the time
There’s nothing inherently wrong with Ward-Prowse.
He was brought in as one of two players tasked with replacing the all-round impact of Declan Rice, with West Ham paying somewhere between £25m and £30m to Southampton.
Under David Moyes, he largely did what was expected — delivering from set-pieces and creating chances. Compared to the rest of the league, his output stacked up well.
High work rate, end product — on the surface, it looked like a solid signing.
The problem was always resale
But this is where the issue lies.
Ward-Prowse was never a player likely to generate significant resale value.
And once Moyes departed, his place in the team quickly became uncertain. He drifted in and out under Julen Lopetegui and Graham Potter, before being almost completely phased out under Nuno Espirito Santo.
A familiar West Ham pattern
Now it looks increasingly likely he’ll be sold this summer, potentially back to Southampton.
If that happens, West Ham could be looking at recouping somewhere between £5m and £8m — a loss of around £20m on a player who effectively delivered one strong season.
Why this keeps happening
And that’s the point.
This isn’t about whether Ward-Prowse is a good player — he’s okay.
It’s about the type of signing.
Too often, West Ham have bought players without considering the longer-term picture. When circumstances change — whether it’s a new manager or a shift in style — those players quickly lose value.
I wouldn’t say it was a transfer that made sense he has a track record of consistently losing as a captain, like Noble great man manager average player that gives 100% every day.
He wasn’t pl standard when we paid a lot for him and the fans are paying the price.
Yes agree with the general point but was JWP ever a good signing for us? I don’t remember his influence on games, he’s slow not defensive or creative and his contribution relies on dead ball deliveries which we seemed to lose the ability to score from.
This issue is not simply whether we make paper profit (amortisation argument) it’s also the real cash impact of being unable to sell at a cash profit and raise funds to further develop the squad. We have been really poor at that in the past 15yrs and has culminated in our poor financial position we currently find ourselves.
Maybe the last summer window finally saw the strategy change sufficiently that the downward spiral will stop – albeit I’m not sure we will turn a cash profit on Taty & Pablo
Anybody know what his ” book value” is?
By seaon end, it’ll be three years amortised!
I take your point though, no resell value to generate any profits whatsoever.
We do not lose those sorts of money on players, players are very amortised by the time we sell them.
Where they don’t perform they’re also put out on loan bringing in a loan fee while they amortise.
Indeed I can often predict what players will be sold for by looking at their amortised value on the books at their time of sale.
The problem is not losing money on players but buying players who do not perform, because that means they’re not contributing to results which are accordingly poor.
It’s the poor results that cost money in league position payments, not qualifying for Europe, getting knocked out of cups.
At the end of this season JWP will be on the books at £7.5m to £8.75m depending on precisely what he was bought for, he will also have brought in loan fees so a sale at about £5m would not be losing money.