This Premier League transfer window spend has been the biggest ever on record with player purchases into the billions. Even so-called ‘competing’ clubs, with whom West Ham would want to be considered in the same sentence – Spurs and Nottingham Forest – have spent over £300 million between them on players.
Have a guess what West Ham’s nett spend was. Anybody?
And if the start of the season had not been three crashing defeats, let’s not kid ourselves, the last minute thrashing-around-transfer window blind panic would not have happened. The board and chairman suddenly saw ‘relegation’ writ large in media headlines and bowed to demands to bring players in: Mateus Fernandes and Soungoutou Magassa arrived to huge relief rather than elation.
El Hadji Malkck Diouf looks excellent and I’m willing to back Mads Hermansen to succeed. But after selling Mohammed Kudus, one of the clubs’ best players to arch rivals Spurs, West Ham fans had every right to expect bigger investment before last week’s panic buying.
Let’s not kid ourselves, one win against ‘Forest does not mean West Ham’s problems have disappeared. They might have been submerged by temporary elation after Graham Potter changed tack and got the best out of his resources yesterday. Thank heavens for Crysencio Summerville’s recovery from surgery and the Manager’s abandonment of defensive, fear-laden team set-ups. May they never return.
This Summer the Hammers have lost ten and sold two players from the squad and brought in two free signings and four paid acquisitions- plus whatever fourth-rate defender comes in under the wire today.
West Ham are genuinely lucky to have the loyalty of such giants as Jarrod Bowen, Lucas Paquetá and Tomas Soucek at their core. But they cannot do it on their own and deserved to be backed to the hilt and supported by an ambitious leadership.
After a summer transfer window handled in such an amateur fashion, weakening their own negotiating position by telling the world that West Ham needed to sell before buying, Hammers fans will have already passed judgement.
Supporters and critics alike can do the arithmetic and, when the dust has settled, realise that compared to the spending of just about every Premier League side, in neither the ambition of the club’s owners nor their financial outlay, can West Ham be considered remotely ‘massive’.
Will never change while Sullivan and Brady are at our club.
On balance a reasonable transfer window with some good young players brought in and a centre back who’ll get his head on a ball, that’ll make two now with Mavrapanos.
As we have seen over the last few years splashing the cash doesn’t guarantee anything and comparing our expenditure with other clubs is irrelevant.
I’m pleased we moved Kudus on, he flattered to decieve last season and will be a better fit for spurs. As to all the garbage about selling him to our biggest rivals, I’ve never bought that BS, I support West Ham, our players, and with the odd exception (Fornals) am not interested in where they go and how they are doing once they have left the building.
Certainly it was a badly run window as ever, which is why I switch off and come to read posts end of August. I thought we came out of it quite well in the end, although it only happened because of sudden fears of relegation!
Midfield has some competition for places. Young, athletic, quality players signed for the midfield. We have some experience and younger players + academy players. Good fullbacks. Thankfully Paqueta ( and Soucek) stayed. Him and Fernandes will create chances, but the forward line is light and as everyone says, with any injuries it’ll be threadbare.
In all of this my thinking is that Potts, Guilherme, Scarles, Callum Marshall and Earthy really are in the manager’s plans and will be an integral part of the team. With the few signings we have risk of injuries, they could play a big part in fighting off relegation? That is what looking at my crystal ball tells me anyhow😁😁😁
Now up to the manager, there’s a team there, some good characters playing their hearts out for the team (Dinos, Soucek, Bowen, Paqueta, .. pretty much all of them!), really talented youngsters too. He has do it now, use the right players in the right positions, play a system which suits the players & get us mid table and go from there.
like many here I do fear for the future of the club. Perhaps they will try again to bring in a Steidten or director of football, restructure the board? Without a full picture or experience of the goings on, all a bit beyond my ken. Getting back the stability David Moyes brought would be neat.
A lot depends on this season we need results on the pitch. If we build the team up gradually, get Academy players into the team (like Noble, Declan Rice in the past) I’m fine with that, rather than attempting to buy big names.
It is dicy though of course. COYI
Good post Martin and completely agree. Our net spend this window was £56.4 million including potential add ons and the balance of the Todibo fee. So much for “Judge us at the end of the window”. In contrast Arsenal’s net spend was £262.7 million, Liverpool £218.4 million and Spurs £133.3 million. So much for building “a world class team for a world class stadium”. I was elated yesterday seeing our 0-3 win but we just knew Sullivan will never change and we still lack depth in so many areas. 2 and a half months window yet blind panic after our awful start and I feel so deflated. No cohesive transfer strategy and while our rivals strengthen our own lack of ambitions can be summed up by “Just like my dreams”.
Incoming
Jean-Clair Todibo – Nice, £35m
El Hadji Malick Diouf – Slavia Prague, £19m
Daniel Cummings – Celtic, free
Kyle Walker-Peters – Southampton, free
Callum Wilson – Newcastle, free
Mads Hermansen – Leicester City, £18m
Mateus Fernandes – Southampton, £42m
Soungoutou Magassa – Monaco, £17.3m
Igor Julio – Brighton, loan
Total £131.3 million
Outgoing
Mohammed Kudus – Tottenham, £55m
Nayef Aguerd – Marseille, £19.9m
Edson Alvarez – Fenerbahce, loan
Patrick Kelly – Barnsley, undisclosed
Sean Moore – Shelbourne, undisclosed
Aaron Cresswell – Stoke, free
Vladimir Coufal – Hoffenheim, free
Kamarai Swyer – Northampton, free
Michail Antonio – released
Lukasz Fabianski – released
Danny Ings – Sheffield United, free
Kurt Zouma – released
Michael Forbes – Northampton, loan
Gideon Kodua – Luton, loan
Mason Terry – Braintree, loan
Emerson Palmieri – Marseille, undisclosed
Total £74.9 million
Exactly so, and if I may say, thank you for saving me collating it all. Nett spend of 57 million for 15th biggest side in Europe. Not replacing Aguerd and no striker fit for purpose are both grossly negligent as far as I’m concerned.
Well that was underwhelming. What happened to the Cresswell signing?
Completely agree with you Martin, good article. I said earlier we need to keep our first eleven fit or we could be in big trouble. Other teams must rub their hands together when dealing with us. “Oh it’s West Ham, they’ll either pay way too much for our player or we’ll get their one dirt cheap.” Seems like the only ambition is to finish 17th. We must be the worst run club in the PL. One day I got to be happy with WHU, then today back to misery. Oh happy days.
Do any of us know the true PSR situation and how much we were restricted in spending? Or is it just easy to blame the board. Last year a huge amount was spent and in the past salaries have been high so are we in part paying for that. I don’t know maybe you do Martin?
Whilst we would all have like more players and we have brought in less ( in terms of numbers) than we got rid of, are we weaker for it, imho the answer is no. Diouf looks class KWP looks decent, hopefully the GK will come good, Fernandez looks a star in making and Magassa could be good buy. Don’t know much about Igor but can he be worse than Aguerd? And whilst Wilson wasn’t what we all wanted, we’re not other positions more critical? And he did look decent yesterday. Forest may have spent loads more but we fully deserved the 3 points yesterday our GK didn’t have to make a save of note. Let’s hope it’s a start. A more solid defence legs in MF and hopefully a fit Summerville and results should start coming good. And hopefully we can then start to build window upon window
We could have won the FA Cup, secured European football and still sold the family silver. My bad, that was Crystal Palace. Yes we’ve a clown at the helm but it could be even worse!
You’re right, but when a clown moves into a “palace” , he doesn’t become a king. The “palace” becomes a circus
Martin
We may not have spent as much as some other teams but we still have a first team squad of 27 players. We also have the the least number of games to play with no European football and are already being out of the Cabarro cup. The next transfer window opens in 16 games. I think we now have enough quality to keep clear of relegation provided Potter gives up with 5 at the back and his negative tactics.
If there is any money left we can spend that in the next window when we see where our biggest deficiencies are. I am not sure anyone can be certain where they are right now.
Our net spend (including the Todibo fee) was £50m this window. We rank 7th in England for net transfer spend over last four years. Problem is that we spent so much on very poor players on massive wages. Moyes, Steidten, Loppy & Sullivan (whoever made the decisions) wasted a bundle. We’ve spent well over £400m in the last four years and incredibly this includes £242m on the following: Alvarez, Ward-Prowse, Aguerd, Kilman, Todibo, Mavropanos, Ings, Cornet & Guilherme. A staggering lack of value there. I’m surprised we spent as much as we did this summer and we seem to have got better value (for example Walker-Peters and Wilson looked great value yesterday).
Sensible post. The issue has never been with investment, it’s been the lack of plan and scattergun approach to every single window for the past 12 years.
That is 100% down to Sully.
I agree with your comments, especially fact that as well as spending huge money on signings, quite a few of whom haven’t done great we overpaid on wages meaning in some cases we could not off load players who would rather sit in reserves on their big wages. So think we have done well to off load and most of signings we have made this summer look good additions. And I was pleasantly surprised at performance of Wilson yesterday so here’s hoping. Overall look at least to have legs in midfield decent full backs and overall despite in terms of lower numbers coming in than out feel we are stronger now than last season.
Let’s see and hope yesterdays 3 points against big spending Forest is just the start
Well said iron Rich. I am certainly not an apologist for our board and believe that if there was a foot in mouth award Sully / Brady would win it hands down – but I do believe that PSR is a reality – look at Villa and Newcastle this window and remember that both Everton and Forest were docked points two seasons back
As Iron Rich has pointed out our problem is that we have wasted money – and certainly Sully has contributed to that – I was never a Moyes out person but he also wasted money – Aguerd JWP and Cornet as noted above but also Vlasic and Scamacca
A permanent buy at Centre Back would have been nice but otherwise our window was not that bad
Martin I support you in hoping that Potter will play a more attacking game
Its interesting that of Steidten’s first buys we are now down to Mavropanos who might turn out to be good for the team
Kudus is a really exciting player – but one challenge (not his fault) is that his best position is the same as Bowen’s
Martin let us hope for a September of positive vibes
COYI
It really has been a window of broken promises and lies. It started with the need for a new striker, the promise of younger players to reduce our ageing squad and a chance to bring the promising academy players closer to the first team. Potter, a manager known to develop younger squads, seems now to resort to what all our managers do, play a supposed set of faithfuls in fear of losing a match, this reducing the risk of trying to give a youngster a chance.
We are then told by the board we need to sell to buy, PSR is a problem, we go for older free agents such as Wilson and then delay to the last minute because panic sets in because of two disastrous losses. Suddenly we have money, we go for players many haven’t heard of and last minute knee jerks. Our offers are well below the asking prices with little time to truly negotiate. All this a Sullivan tactic to say we tried
I would like to see where Marshall, Potts, Cummings, Scarles and even Guilherme fit in to the managers plans for the season. All possible players for the future with a manager known to develop youth. Have we bought players to build a squad or just to satisfy Sullivan’s continuing ego to play Football manager with our club? Ok I’ll give you Fernandes, but I expect Potter and Macaulay had some demands that Sullivan was willing to give in to, but in reality he ran the roost on this window.
If we see success in the coming matches it will be down to Potter working hard to build that team ethos and squad cohesion, not down to Sullivan’s miraculous signings.
Another typically negative post from Martin not a treasure.
How do you know what would have happened you just preach in your negative crap every day
Graham, try and make your point without taking the piss out of Martin’s surname please.
I’m quite certain you don’t address people like that at work or in a shop so don’t do it on here.
It’s not social media mate and nobody is forcing you to read “every day”.
Sorry agree my post was out of order, i have posted a more considered post now. Apologise for this one
Trying to find a positive slant on the way we have approached this window. I’m all ears.
A shambles of a window really. No planning, no ambition just scatter gun bids, phantom bids, low ball bids, insulting bids. I feel Sullivan was forced to buy the younger midfield players by the reaction of the fan base and the fear of relegation. The protest are coming. The pressure is building Sullivan and Brady have abused our loyalty and it’s time to say enough is enough pack up and go. Judge us at the end of the window. It’s been a shambles.
Judge us at the end of the window……
.
Below average, must try harder
GK – unproven but hopefully a good buy
Full backs – box ticked
Centre half – even weaker than the end of the season. A big fail.
Midfield – unproven but guy feels is a big tick
Forwards – at best, no worse off and so still a major weakness.
Biggest fail was the inability to extract sufficient fees from our sales. You hear of other clubs working hard at finding clubs for their ‘unwanted’, no real evidence for similar with our players.
So, well done for getting 4x players that were clearly Potter’s choice but as I feared from the start, the aged, slow, unprofessional Chairman, sorry, DoF is not up to it.
Agree totally, the most amateur handling of a critical transfer window imaginable.
The midfield was critical and two players aren’t enough – we had to replace JWP, Rodriguez and Soucek as starters.
Yet again no serious centre forward just a punt on a old free.
Instead of 4 poor centre backs we now have 3 plus probably a new bad one.
Despite all this Potter still won’t play academy players.
Not at all the transfer window that was required and gave away one of our best players to Spurs.
A distinct lack of ambition from the Board and we are paying heavily for their past mistakes but I rejoice in the fact that we have only paid money for decent young talent. So at least we have stopped flushing money down the toilet and even the much derided Callum Wilson looked the business yesterday. I believe this wondow has been progress of a sort.
Headline should read WEST HAM BOARD are PASSIVE
The window has closed, the 🤡has been judged and found wanting. It’s high time he was gone.
The fees we got in for Kudas and Aguard equates to what we spent on new players nothing in effect Plus savings on wages So the board havnt spent a penny WHATS NEW
The Protests are coming regardless of the panic button being pushed…until the board the ENTIRE board are gone this club will continue to struggle.
Does everyone not remember us all buzzing at the start of last season when “West Ham had won the window”? Look how that turned out… No one will know how successful this window has been until May, maybe even longer given the main 4 signings are all very young.
No cup runs, no Europe, no league position equals no revenue.
Copy and paste 12 months time.
Stopping a downward spiral is a tough job for potter.
12 players gone, all senior, and unfortunately Rodriguez and Irwin couldn’t make it 14.
Squad is light all over..
The song is about our support being massive, not the club.