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Needed Now More Than Ever I Steidten’s Pearls

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Coming from his previous club, Tim Steidten had a reputation for producing the pearls – the undiscovered gems – with which Bayer Leverkusen went on to achieve so much success. At West Ham we all awaited the arrival of a plethora of young, exciting, undiscovered inexpensive gems about to set the world on fire. After Luis Guilherme, Steidten’s first signing – no more followed and worse still, at present we still have the oldest squad in the Premier League despite the £100m plus investment in August.

Recruits such as Niclas Fullkrug (31 and the less said about him just now the better) and Guido Rodriguez (30) seemed the opposite to everything we’d been promised in the so-called ‘Red Bull’ model of investment.

Each year the quaintly-named ‘Golden Boy’ awards are created in Italy to celebrate the 100 best under 21 year old footballers in Europe. Pearls if ever there were: Now we hear, frustratingly, six of the 100 who made the  awards list were West Ham targets but none were signed by the club: And the young forward they did sign – Luis Guilherme – for in excess of £20 million didn’t even make the list and so far hasn’t made the starting line-up.

A Failure for Steidten?

Those six included Samuel Omorodion, Ibrahim Osman and Vitor Roque: All on the fringes of first team football at the moment but frankly, all young, fast and skilled strikers who we’d dream of having in our squad just now.

Steidten can’t be blamed for Osman who was ‘veto’d by Moyes. That doesn’t mean that we accept that the plan to recruit young talent should be thrown out of the window. With the January window just weeks away now West Ham have an urgent need for young, mobile talent to develop over the coming months. The plan was good, the execution needs some work.

Time for another dive for pearls, I think.

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From the old Bobby Moore Upper to the Billy Bonds' stand these days I've been watching since '03 and a supporter since about 1970.. 'Football is Life' oh yes. Let it raise your spirit but never darken your mood. Life's too short not to enjoy the journey with our Claret and Blue heroes n' villains.

5 comments

  • Andy Stone says:

    If most of the summer signings were young I have my doubts that many would have been played yet. It’s fair to say that five minutes for Guilherme doesn’t add up to being played and although a little older Summerville is getting game time but gets pulled despite playing well.

  • Bill Ryan says:

    It’s possible all his pearls are already here just need maturing before releasing from the academy,as the 30 plus somethings powers wane hopefully the pears will appear

  • Ray says:

    Or maybe another diver? We hear a lot about how good Tim Steiften is at finding new talent, and we marvel at the talents of young players such as Osman (20), Omorodion (20), Duran (21), Yamal (16), Mainoo (19), who tend to debunk the idea that precocious young talent needs to be handled with kid gloves and introduced to top tier football slowly. West Ham pride themselves on their Academy but at the same time are very cagey about releasing their own young players into the senior ranks, preferring instead to loan them out to lower leagues.
    Do we know what Tim Steidten thinks of Sean Moore, Ollie Scarles, Kaelan Casey, George Earthy, Callum Marshall, Freddie Potts and others. Do we have pearls of our own, or are they not of the same standard as those from Spain, Italy and South America? Surely Tim should know, and if he says they are good enough, why don’t we build from there and solve our average age problem? If he doesn’t rate them, well that opens up a whole new discussion.

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