Three signings in, with a number of departures, and the pressure is on for West Ham to bolster their numbers before the season begins.
Player sales in this transfer window have raised approximately £37.6m, with a spend of £59.3m, leaving Lopetegui currently with a squad of 23 players.
Rumours have circulated about FFP, and the transfer kitty either swells in size or drastically reduces depending on whom you believe.
The reality is clubs like Aston Villa, among others, are getting their transfer business done early and were under the FFP spotlight, yet they have a squad of 32 players and spent £98.41m on arrivals, and received £56.7m in transfer fees – which is clearly why they want £35-£40m for Jhon Duran.
The transfer window is understandably difficult to navigate. As soon as a Premier League club inquires about a player abroad, the selling club will increase the fee; we then have another obstacle in persuading the player to buy into the project, albeit the money on offer is the main attraction. The issue then is for failed transfers; the player’s valuation rapidly reduces – Benrahma and Aguerd are great examples. The latter bothers me, as with the player wanting to leave, he’s still under contract, so why wouldn’t the club try to get back what they paid for him, which is £30m, as opposed to taking a loss (rumors suggest they would accept £17m and are in talks with Atletico Madrid)? The logic being, who can the club then buy as a like-for-like replacement at a similar fee?
The club could, however, consider resurrecting their interest in Samu Omorodion as part of their negotiations with the Spanish giants.
The Flynn Downes transfer also strikes me as odd. The club could have used the player as part of a swap deal to secure Walker-Peters and cash from the Saints. Their bargaining chips weren’t that great; the full back will become a free agent in a year’s time, and they desperately wanted Downes after a stellar season in the Championship.
There are bargains to be had; I already highlighted Milenkovic as a steal at £12m and was astonished that En-Nesyri joined Fenerbahce for €18m (£15m) and an annual salary of €4m (£3.37m), which equates to approximately £65k a week. Ronnie Edwards, who was recommended to the club by Barry Fry, also joined Southampton for £3m from Peterborough.
It will be interesting to see whom the club manages to sign over the next few weeks; it certainly will be a busy time for Steidten and his team!
Does the £37.5m inbound sum for players sold include Fornals fee? If not, then the club has plenty of powder dry yet for an explosion of activity!
Finally we also need to take into account that the quoted cost of past inbound transfers are generally nowhere near as high as reported. Typically most players never hit all the triggered clauses to achieve the published headline numbers. Secondly, in general a players value as an asset decreases annually ( amortisation), therefore when they are moved on as an underperformer it’ll be for a fee which is close to what is still outstanding to the club from which he came from.
It’s going to take a minimum of three transfer windows to rebuild the squad to play a more expansive style of football on a consistent basis at a higher level than previous years. We need to readjust any expectations of being a disruptor of the establishment top six for now.
West Ham United are in transition and we as supporters need to exercise patience and enjoy the process!
Great article Matt, lot’s relevant point’s and interestingly, it seems by not jumping in but waiting club’s are beginning to lower their expectations and valuations. Leave it a few more weeks and we’ll be able to sign Wan Bissaka on a free! Seriously though, get Duran, that’s a priority and wait and see as price’s continue falling, remember, very little transpired in January and I’ve a feeling between now and the end of August business will fall off as well so we could pickup a bargain or two.
I want to give these guys the benefit of the doubt and maybe allow one difficult window. I think this one is particularly difficult because the scale of changes required. But it does have the smell of our chairman being to involved where we seem to be quibbling about small amounts of money and not just offering on or very near the asking price. Can not for my life work out why we let Flynn go without getting KWP in exchange. I’m hardly a hard nosed negotiator but even I can work out we have lost any advantage in this whole deal. We need one of these right backs in now. I can understand why they are holding out on the Duran fee as it does seem a bit strong asking 40m for a player that never gets in his club or national side. One last thing is Villa may have 32 players but as I understand it you are only allowed a max of 25
Seven first team players out and one in is not going to make watching WHU a more enjoyable experience. There is a lot of work to do just to gain an overall improvement on last season, or are we already resigned to keeping Zouma, Aguerd and Coufal? Also, players like Kudus are watching to see whether it is in their interests to stay or move on. One other point Gonzo, you are as responsible as anyone for contributing to the transfer nonsense.
Yes, I agree – it will take more than 1 window to fix all the problem areas. The amount of change required is significant, and there’s no quick fix….a long term plan and patience is required….especially with clouds on the horizion for Paqueta and bigger clubs lining up monster deals for Kudos next summer. Also, we need to get back into Europe in order to attract the World’s best players. In the meantime, J-Lo will play the younger players more often than DM – they too need more development and time on the pitch to want to stick around, or else they will also leave or be poached at bargain-based prices! In Time and Tim we Trust. Go Irons!! Cheers
That was a great read, some good points.
We have to put our trust in Tim & J Lo to do the right thing. It will take a few windows to sort this mess anyhow.
Agree with CF. For the first time since I can remember feels like we have people at the helm who have a plan and are focused on bringing in players to fit a system rather than getting any well known name that’s out there.
It was time for DM to go, wasn’t initially happy at all by us bringing in JL but feeling for now a lot more confident that he has a plan and will be allowed to bring in the players to fit that plan. Him and Steidten have time yet and should only be judged when the window’s closed.
23 players vs Villa’s 32, f#ck me.
There’s actually five weeks to go……. not five days – there’s no real pressure. I trust Julen and Tim to bring in the right players. And to move out those that there’s no longer a place for.
We’ll get our new right back and another centre half. A striker (or two) and left sided wide man. Probably before the Aston Villa home game. By the time the new season’s shirt numbers are announced, our first team squad could look very different.
I don’t see other many clubs doing a lot of business.
What is that trust based on? Both men are still in the proving stage. 6 weeks ago I was hopeful that most of our transfer business would have been done by now, but here we are again.
You can’t polish a turd but you can put glitter on it.
Ladies and gentlemen, West Ham United…
We’ve done well to avoid these 2 signings Gonzo. Neither will have any resale value in 3-4 years and both are on the decline. However the lack of alternative signings is a worry and without Moyes to blame it on, you have to wonder what is holding us back. Maybe we just aren’t the attractive option we think we are to these players names and need to lower our sites? Go for young with bags of potential?
I mean what are the odds. Two Jimbos posting at exactly the same time!
There can be no rhyme nor reason for this chaos regarding transfers.
Last year Moyes was blamed for his continual head banging sessions with Tim
Now he’s moved on there are no excuses.
Everything was planned and agreed what was needed.
Fine but we’ve done nothing but duck, dive, haggle and chase players which are out of budget.
Or who are not interested in coming to whu.
Made a good start but have gone backwards since then.
It is getting to the point that you do wonder what is going on? we have our “main targets” yet never seem to do enough to get them over the line or they are not interested so “we move down the list” but again very little movement seems to be happening….the defence could and should of been sorted by now but as ever things move slowly as lowball offers are always going in….we are a big club they say we have ambition to compete its why we moved we were told and yet here we are still worrying about Brentford/Palace/Leicester coming in for players we are supposedly after…with all due respect to those clubs why would we be worrying about them? we can blow them out the water if we wanted but we dont and as ever we are seen as that annoying club in London who really are not serious in whatever they do…..yet the Spuds who do sweet FA year in year out are considered a Big club by the media and you ask why how come…probably because they are run a little more professionally when compared to the circus clown we have running ours.
I prefer to to have David Sullivan as Chairman, over Daniel Levy…
While I agree with you, some elements of media seem to project Spurs as a ‘big’ club, they are still in the 2nd tier of premier clubs.
They were in Champions League last season, still won sweet FA.