With all of the transfer speculation doing the rounds at the moment, it reminds me that we have an unenviable reputation of buying duds , particularly forwards. Mido, McCarthy, Chamakh anyone?
Danny Ings £15 million
Now we have, Danny Ings….15 million pounds for an ageing, injury-prone forward who is not suited to our playing style, is yet another example of our knee jerk transfer policy.
It also transpires that he earns a stratospheric £125k per week and (it gets worse) as he was given a two and a half year deal, the Hammers are obliged to pay £16 million pounds in wages over the next 30 months.
He is now the second top earner in the squad, just behind Lucas Paqueta. To put into perspective, Declan Rice earns £62k per week !
When you look at the transfer deal in its entirety, this really is a disaster from the Hammers. There must have been zero thought or any kind of long-term planning from Moyes when it came to bringing Ings into the club – only pure panic.
If our Supremo remains at the London Stadium as manager beyond the end of this season, he should look to move the 30-year-old striker on this summer, even if it’s for a big loss.
Despite the favourable result for us last night between Leeds and Leicester and our coupled with our poor showing against Palace on Sunday, we are still in danger of being dragged into the relegation dogfight below us. We have now had two defeats on the bounce and what with our next three matches are Manchester City away, Manchester United at home and Brentford away. We could easily continued that run with zero points.
And if that happens, then we will probably have to win one of our final two games against Leicester and Leeds in order to stay up. Would you be confident of Moyes’s men getting that done? I wouldn’t be. It’s time that the players realise just how serious our current situation is.
Let’s hope that we avoid relegation this season. However, whatever happens between now and the end of the campaign, BIG changes are needed from top to bottom at the club.
Our striker issue is one of the things I don’t want to blame Moyes for – this problem existed long before him, although he has absolutely not managed to solve it.
Our current top PL goalscorer is Antonio on 61 goals. This has to be one of, if not the, lowest figure for a PL club. Haaland at City can almost match that in his first season. We should obviously not compare too much against them, but it has taken Antonio 8 years to rack up those numbers.
This site has previously listed Hammers strikerst and their goals. If it wasn’t a sad read, I would’ve founf it hysterical… Moyes have actually come closer to “solving” the issue than most PL-era managers by utilizing wingers as strikers in Antonio and Arnautovic (remember when Bilic wanted Antonio as a right-back??)…
West Ham seems to be the graveyard of No9’s… Ings have had a great PL record throughout his career – but unable to replicate this in Claret and Blue. It’s easy to blame Moyes for his style of play not suiting Ings (or any other strikers, for that sake) – but this is not a “new” problem for us; if it was, Antonio would not be our top scorer with 61 goals in 8 years…
Have to agree with everything written.
I haven’t just woken up and many of those now critical of the Ings purchase, no longer remember baying for him to be signed as our very own “fox in the box” due to Scamacca unable to stay fit for any real duration.
We aren’t in the greatest of situations right now, but it is all about the detail and a great deal of the detail is missing right here.
I THINK IT WAS MOYES WHO TOLD EVERYONE HE WAS IDEAL AND WAS BELIeVED. NO COPING WITH PEOPLE WHO BELIEVE THAT STUFF LOL. Just look at the man’s previous striker signings = maybe two half decent ones in his career. Not sure either it matters what we think. Surely it’s about what he does which is very little and a lot of dough to pay for a bloke the manager barely uses having told us how good he is. One look at the injury record tells all
I can’t say that I am over the moon happy with the signing of Ings, but I feel like this whole thing is becoming like a fox hunt. No reasoned debate about the options which were available at the time of his signing.
It seems that commenting with an alternative reasoned view of things is becoming harder, with the once again TOXIC cloud which seems engulfs this club with such regularity. Supporting this club is becoming harder by the day, because regardless of whether Moyes stays or goes, this sort of stuff is here to stay. I always credited the spuds with this sort of stuff, but maybe that’s because they are a deluded bunch who feel that they are a bigger club than they really are.
Sadly the sacking of managers has become an event in itself and three years ANYWHERE as a manager seems to be almost impossible these days.
OUR History as a club was NEVER like this and so much different from the other clubs. If we ran our household’s like this, we’d all end up bankrupt and in my view, true success cannot be built by operating in this manner.
I never came on here to taunt anyone or fight, but simply to express my opinion regarding my club, just saying 🤷♂️
I think we all have very good reason to being where we are with him. Look at his dreadful record since the middle of last season, Past his sell by. I said way back in the summer I didn’t trust him in the market and this would be a very difficult season.
I do agree that Ings is like many of those strikers that we have become accustomed to getting, injury prone and looking for their final payday… Who knows, he may surprise us all at some point.
I still believe that Ollie Watkins was the player we should’ve brought at the time instead of Benny. But that’s my opinion.
Haller, Scamacca and Ings all joined West Ham and according to some experts suddenly became bad players or did not perform. They did not suddenly become bad players but the one thing all 3 of them have in common is that they have all played under Moyes. The second fact which i think is also widely fair to say is that playing under Moyes they have been left isolated with little support etc.. Moyes has cost the club a fortune by buying players, not using them properly and then selling them on for half what he paid for them. The problem with Moyes is that he does not develop a group of players into a system that suits them. Let’s put it like this, if Moyes had the current Man City squad, do you think he would win the PL, the answer is NO. We need a manager that has that capability.
On the contrary, if Moyes can get a squad of players like West Ham have to sixth and seventh in the league plus to European semi finals back to back, imagine what he could achieve with a squad of players like City have got.
Probably put them in the relegation zone a year later
I agree with Johnham1 this is down to Moyes and his leave one up on his own strategy which is awful. It has only ever worked effectively with Wimbledon playing Fash the Bash up top and sky it up and fight for it. Every time we play a footballing forward like Scamacca they need others to bring into play. When we had Cottee we had Mac. Ings was not a bad signing, he is a poacher, but he does not have the physique or speed to be a lone wolf. Moyes has not a clue about integration and usually plays people out of their best position. He always wants to sub like for like, so his in-game analysis is poor. He did a job well, but has hit the wall of his own limitations.