For fans on the outside, it does seem a little surprising that West Ham United have still not concluded the sale of Dutch winger Crysencio Summerville. In these days of a tight-lipped board room – which are to be welcomed compared with the bad old days – supporters and media can only guess at the position regarding their flying winger who has been the subject of interest from half a dozen top Premier League sides – and Tottenham.
The danger for West Ham is that whilst Summerville’s future is not determined, the club tread water on moving to secure a replacement. Leaving business until late in the window is fraught with the risk of losing the most suitable candidates – as may be happening with Leicester’s Abdul Fatawu who is now the subject of attention from Turkey, as told by footballlowdown.com:
“With no advancements towards Crycensio Summerville’s exit, West Ham United are now in an awkward position when it comes to pursuing Abdul Fatawu this summer.
The Dutchman’s exit would likely lend to the Hammers pressing on with their negotiations to sign the 22-year-old Leicester City star, one of many expected to leave as they try and balance the books following relegation to League One.
However, no progress has allowed other clubs to make a jump in negotiations and Besiktas have entered the chase in a commanding position.”
Fatawu – linked with Turkish giants now as West Ham tread water on a major transfer target
Tricky problems for our club who would rather hold onto their talent but will be trying to cover all eventualities: West Ham are particularly weak in wide positions and one might well make the case for strengthening now – irrespective of the Summerville deal.
With just youngster Kieber Lamadrid on the books to play on that left side now that Adama Traore’s short contract has expired means, surely, West Ham need to bring in another pacy player irrespective of their Summerville discussions.
But with £20 million – plus- the expected price for the Ghanaian’s signature, it is entirely understandable that West Ham drag their feet seeking an alternative – such as Brighton’s Tommy Watson. It does seem from the outside that whilst a Summerville deal remains in the air, a big chunk of West Ham’s summer recruitment is in limbo.
How about this? Sell Summerville to Chelsea for £50mm being £25m cash and Disasi (if we can persuade him to enjoy first team football with us in the Championship). This gives us the circa £25m we’ll need to get Fatawu from Leicester before someone else grabs him.
Suddenly we have a good defence and a higher scoring forward line. Add in Matt Targett on a free as centre back cover and things look a lot better.
I like Pablo, he’s a reall battler and opens up defences for others to score, but he’s not a goal-scorer and (sadly) we need to find him a home elsewhere, replacing him with a hungry young British forward using whatever money we got for Pablo. I don’t know anything about Connor (from Rangers) but his stats look promising. Perhaps he’d be a good buy with the cash from selling Wan-Bissaka?
This would give us ; Fatawu, Connor, Disasi, Targett coming in, plus the young hungry forward……for the money we got in for Summerville, Wan-Bissaka and Pablo i.e. a nil net spend. I know there are wages implications but assuming that the money for Fernandes plus some capital injected has removed the major threat of penalties for breaking the financial rules, I think we’d have a much better balanced squad for a 46-match season.
Despite liking the idea of Summervile, have to say Disasi + Fatawu sounds pretty tempting.
The transfer situation does appear to be quite worrying to an “outside onlooker”. As we , apparently, procrastinate, so our intended targets seem to slip through our fingers !
I guess that we will have to look on with fingers crossed, & hope that our officials know what they are doing, & eventually make the right signings. But, remember, these are largely the self same officials who presided over the club last season; & look at what they eventually achieved ! Still very worrying times for West Ham supporters
Martin I can’t help but wonder if this player may have fallen into the category of ” we’re now looking at potential upgrades of initial targets”.
Plus, we now have a recruitment director who no doubt is contrasting and comparing prior targets and his own contacts?
Somehow Fernandes leaving seemed right, perhaps because he is an all round accomplished player and the timing was spot on too. Summerville is brilliant just sometimes, but then does not influence a match over 90 mins. All of this to say, if he were to remain at WHU then team could have a forward line that will score goals against most Championship teams & he could still improve his game then move on at some stage.
S., Bowen, Pablo, Taty never seemed like a frontline that hummed and were in tune, setting each other up for chances, switching attacking style according to the defensive setup in front of them. ALL of this was missing from the team. There is a lot of work in my opinion for the manager & assistant to do, to get what could be a dangerous forward line, regularly scoring goals as a unit, not individuals and for there to be more inventiveness and ruthlessness in front of goal. Get that frontline working well, able to adapt in a game, play each other in, then you have a frontline for the Championship and the PL.
As for selling hm for 50M, you’d get a player in for 25M perhaps,,, obviously profitable, but does not outweigh the loss to the team and would he be good enough for the PL?
Perhaps players are waiting to know who else remains? If Bowen, Taty, Dinos, Soucek were openly declared as remaining by the club that might mean S. would stay as well, with the idea of getting back to the PL in a season – a really tough ask, because NES really needs to be on his game as well and not repeat the whole series of losses the team had because of questionable decisions with disastrous consequences.