Window hangs in the balance with players leaving but none arriving
When will West Ham ever learn? This question has been haunting me for the past 48 hours, as it seems the Hammers are on the verge of repeating the same old mistake of leaving things too late in the transfer window.
However, things were supposed to be different this time. Why? Because West Ham now has a director of football overseeing recruitment at the club. In an ideal world, this would mean that targets are not only identified BEFORE the transfer window but also that due diligence is completed.
Which raises two significant questions as the moves for Ibrahim Osman and Jota hover on the brink of collapse. Firstly, why did West Ham not know that Osman and his new agent were in dispute with his former agent? Once armed with that knowledge, it would have been clear that any negotiations would be incredibly protracted. The fact that we seemed to have initiated negotiations halfway through January and with the wrong agent is baffling. Why was this information not gathered in November or December?
Window hangs in the balance with Hammers discovering there are issues surrounding the transfer of Jota
Secondly, why has Jota’s Saudi tax situation come as such a massive surprise? Once again, the information is in the public domain. Yet somehow, West Ham seems to have gotten themselves into a pickle by discovering that the transfer might be more complicated than they thought on the 28th of January.
The whole situation is completely avoidable by commencing negotiations and investigations before the window opens. Unfortunately for West Ham, it appears that despite the recruitment of Tim Steidten, old habits die hard.