West Ham’s head of recruitment Nils Koppen arrived with a pedigree largely unproven in the English Leagues, from Danish side FC Copenhagen with Scottish Premiership giants Rangers before that.
His early work at West Ham appears to be rectifying the ‘unproven’ element, with Joel Veltman ‘done’, Manor Solomon ‘done’, Arne Engels ‘en route’ and Troy Parrott in the ‘hopeful’ column.
Three players linked with West Ham this weekend – in the ‘up and coming’ category – would appear to have Koppen’s experience and contacts from the Scandinavian leagues written all over them.
The apparent ‘out of the blue‘ bid made and rejected for Viking FK winger Edvin Austbø and the report today (although talked down by ExWHUEmployee) for winger Daniel Job – from Norway’s second division – according to sports.yahoo.com– suggests the Irons are looking to new markets ‘out east’ from which to get better value young talent:
“West Ham have also now made an offer to sign Job. Serie A side Lecce have also tabled a bid to Kongsvinger.
The report states that around £3.4m has been offered by both clubs for the young talent.”
Daniel Job – rumoured that he’s the subject of a West Ham ‘€4 million punt’
Today’s footballnorge.com also suggests the Hammers are (or, more likely, were) looking at Norway international Patrick Berg. Quite possibly before settling on Celtic’s Engels, Berg, who was prominent in his countries’ World Cup campaign, was reported as being on West Ham’s radar.
So it wouldn’t be a surprise to see the Irons follow up on one of their recommendations from Koppen before the window closes: €10 million for exciting prospect Austbø seems a much better ‘punt’ on a rough diamond that Tim Steidten’s ill judged, now infamous €25m gamble on Brazilian Luis Guilherme two summers ago.