By Sean Whetstone
West Ham will have one of the smallest squad’s in the Premier League on 1st July unless new players are signed before then.
Mark Noble, David Martin, Andriy Yarmlolenko, Ryan Fredericks, Alphonse Areola, Angelo Ogbonna and Alex Kral are all out of contract on 30th June leaving just 17 first time players. Lukasz Fabianski at least has signed a 12-month extension.
Hopefully, Alphonse Areloa will sign permanently by then and perhaps Ogbonna will be offered a new contract but that would only take the squad to nineteen.
With reports that Nikola Vlasic, Tomas Soucek, Arthur Masuaku, Darren Randolph and Said Benrahma could be sold if valuations are met that slim squad could shrink further in a doomsday scenario.
With pre-season starting in just four weeks David Moyes needs to soon hit the ground running to fill and reinforce his 25 man senior squad ahead of the new season which starts early on 6th August just nine weeks away.
Haven’t replaced Haller or any that have left, we are losing goalkeeper(s) (Martin and maybe Randolph) right back (Fredericks), 2 central midfielders (Kral, Noble), right winger (Yarmolenko),and probably central defender and left back (Diop and Masuaku), We need to spend somewhere in the region of £300m on replacements now as Ogbonna and Dawson won’t go on forever, Cresswell is ageing, Fabianski too, lets face it our chairmen are doing something wrong because the assetts are being stripped and not replaced, this summer could be the same as every other with dithering Dave at the helm who is more concerned with paying the right place than securing the right players and Newman is an oxymoron because no new men are coming through the door,
Not only do those Players need replacing they need to be brought in very quickly. How can Moyes suggest poor Mikey can lead the line, he looked exhausted through most of the Season, for goodness sake Mr Moyes he is getting older. We need to decent Strikers in to take the weight off, they don’t have to be the top notch type. Moyes proved with Haller, he cannot use or handle such Strikers anyway. I would rather have to cheaper opportunist Strikers.
Again he seems to expect Cresswell to remain eternally young, the lad needs a couple of back-ups. The older you get the more likely you are to get injured.
Pope would make a good young replacement and not to expensive and young enough.