Unless Sam Allardyce and David Sullivan have something up their sleeves, this January will pass without a whimper and that has to be… a very good thing.
Frenetic January activity is not the name of the game at West Ham for once. We are sorted – and frankly it nice to have a peaceful midwinter rather than worrying about who may leave and whether anybody needs to be urgently replaced.
With Ricardo Vaz Te now part of our history and Mauro Zarate out on loan and Ravel Morrison set to make an unlikely move to Lazio I’d call that good business.
The wage ‘save’ when all three have departed will be in the region of £75k.
Darren Fletcher may of course arrive but whilst I have great admiration for his battle against serious illness I do wonder why we are entertaining guy who has played a handful of Premier League games for United and has been on the first team sidelines for a month.
At 30, he is also outside our age range and if we are to strengthen midifield as appears to be the desire its serious pace and energy we need.
Fletcher may show all of those qualities were he to make a loan move but I remain unconvinced he’s the answer to the lack of pace, energy and drive we are seeing from Mark Noble and Kevin Nolan.
In general terms January spending never a clever idea. Big and successful clubs don’t do it and when you look at our recent excursions into that market, we have spent an awaful lot of mopney on players who made n o impact whatsoever – last winter being a perfect example of the point.
Some may call this January very boring – personally I think its very satisfactory!