Whether borne out of opportunism or impulsiveness, West Ham’s acquisition of Andrew Irving on deadline day was met with a nonplussed disinterest by fans and commentators alike, Immediately loaned back to Austrian Klagenfurt, he remained hidden until the summer of 2024 when he rejoined the main squad for Lopetegui’s preseason.
Surviving Lopetegui’s cull whilst midfielders Ward-Prowse, Potts and Earthy all dispatched on loan, we as supporters thought there must be something hidden which had finally been spotted by the coaching staff. Six months on and we are still none the wiser. Irving has made his debut as he has done everything else at West Ham – quietly, efficiently but without show or panache. Is he just the product of being in the right place at the right time?
Even after his debut, opinions are split. Some reports this weekend suggest he is not good enough for the Premier League, others notably sports.yahoo suggest “Andy Irving deserves more first-team opportunities”. The faux mini-cult status afforded Irving by the Hammers fans against Chelsea was fan humour in the extreme – lampooning Chelsea’s gifted Cole Palmer with the ‘you’re just a ‘S*** Andy Irving’ epithet was delicious irony simply because Irving is just ‘there’ – probably because of what he is not: He isn’t injured, he isn’t Guido Rodriguez, he isn’t a yellow card liability and he isn’t going to dive in rashly and give away a free kick Mavropanos or Alvarez style.
And so far, he hasn’t displayed the flashes of – whatever it was – that made him worth a punt when West Ham signed him.
Perhaps he is this very personification of the mediocrity of West Ham’s squad depth. Solid, average, reliable – and soon to be overtaken by better quality players I would hope. But just for now he’s ‘probably ok’.
Irving has great passing stats and looks like he has a shot on him as well. He clearly works hard for the team. Early days I’d say to make any kind of judgement on the lad.
He’s had one game, away at a club challenging for a champions league place,
Typically negative C&H “slow news day” article.
Haven’t seen enough of him to have a solid opinion. I thought he would be exposed v Chelsea but he surprised me. Is he better than JWP: no. is he better than Soler no….Soucek, no. But he seems to bring something none of them do. I’d not be in a rush to get rid
Every team, and this is a team game, needs it high profile skilled players, it’s work horses and players that can do their bit to a high std. Now I put Andy in one of the last two categories but come on give him a chance! He has only just started his first game and did quite well. Now the challenge to Andy is continue in this vain with a gradual improvement. Really weather or not he is good enough to play in the premier league is still in Andy’s hands!
I remember when Declan Rice was just average . The only way to find out is game time for all the youngsters .
I totally disagree with these comments.
Andy Irving has imho done well in of his limited appearance time.
I believe he offers solidity, mobility and rarely misplaces a pass.
He has a decent shot in his armoury and would be deserving of a run in the side.
A good team always needs an Andy Irving.
I agree, think as usual this article is just a sad wind up
I agree, and I think C&H have a clear issue with Irving “not being premiership class” yet pipe on about people who have not played at that level yet. This page has gone down in my estimation with this continued unfairness toward him. He has not let us down at all when he has played. Maybe the average here is the journalism.
This seems to have wound a lot of people up.
Why would whu be selling players when they can’t buy?
Players, whoever, Potter needs at least until summer period.
All of whom, hopefully, will have been given chance to prove their worth.
Dust has hardly settled on transfers and another batch of speculated tosh has appeared.
David, Gomes, Boniface, Banzuzi, Dewsbury-Hall, Yilmaz any of which could be on their way.
Speculation at least needs to be achievable.
First 3 are far to expensive (wages and/or transfer fee). Boniface contract is 2029.
Last 3 were broken promises.
Summer will be an en masse exodus, another rebuild, let talk of transfers die until then.
Danny Murphy the co commentator at the Chelsea game praised Irving several times during the match. I think he knows more about players than second rate Claret and Hugh ‘journalists’.
Give it a a rest Mr Treasure!
Sticking to the subject in the article, Andy Irving, I’m not clear what the article is aiming to achieve?
Irving has barely played 1st team minutes at West Ham (161 over 9 games) so it’s impossible to cast much of any opinion about him.
IF I was to offer anything based on the game time I’ve seen (Incl. preseason), it’s that if he was playing regularly in a Championship team in the heart of midfield, he’d probably shine.
Completely disagree with your view Martin and dissapointed that you chose to describe Andy as “Mr Average”. He only made his debut last week and until the latter stages produced a good performance.
Yes he’s having to work hard to adapt to the Premier League but at least give him credit for his determination to fight for more first team opportunities, instead of just writing him off. There are plenty of others who have come to Wesf Ham for one last big pay day over the years.and haven’t shown half the effort which Andy gives.
To be honest a “Mr.Average” is a lot better than some of the dead wood / over the hill players we have in the current squad !
I dont like the way you put him down calling him ‘Mr Average’. Thats one way to try and knock players confidence and depreciate his value.
I see Irving more as an Alan Dickens type, someone the club needs, values what they bring, and we can rely on to put in a shift when called upon.
I agree with Dan on this one, you’re normally informative and a reliable source Martin but you’re sadly, wrong on this one. In pre-season game’s he played with intelligence diligence, awareness and a good decree of all round skill. He’s continued to develop and learn and his first start was steady and he showed great fitness to last so long. Soler is also a very intelligent footballer and has the vision to get into good attacking positions, hence, his goal against Fulham. Irving will thrive given time and opportunity, as will Todibo who’s young and inexperienced but hopefully Potter can upgrade him in the next 18 month’s.
Oh God! Alan bleeping Dickens! Rubbish!
Irvings only just made his first start. Transfermarkt have him bumping along at worth about 500k to 700k before we bought him for an undisclosed fee that I’ve seen described as seven figures.
Since with us his value has risen steeply to now listed at £5m. That will increase further if he continues to make starts and if we were to put him on a new contract which we’d be out of our minds not to given that just the longer deal would increase his value significantly. It would be like printing money.
He’s already a success from a financial point of view, he’s our not so far along the line example of what progressive clubs like Villa, Bournemouth and Brighton are doing all the time. Just look at the sales that they’ve made, they make money on player dealings.
In that way they boost their revenue by making additional money whereas we squander our revenue advantage over them with appalling decisions like appointing no hoper managers who finish our season before Xmas and not spending a few million more on a player who close to doubled in value in just a few months after we turned him down. If we’d just bought Duran and sold him as a trading proposition we’d have made tens of millions, but instead of that Villa have is part of the reason they outperform us.
We should outperform all of Villa, Brighton and Bournemouth because if we operated as efficiently as they do our revenue would be a lot higher than theirs. We blow our natural advantage while they make most of disadvantageous positions by running the clubs in modern ways.
We run the club like its in the dark ages and we’ve just turned our back on their model of doing things, we actually had the top bloke at doing it who we never at any point allowed to get on with it. Interfered when he said we should be bidding on Gyokeres, and when Duran cost a bit more, made him go and get Fullkrug instead.
Saddled him with bringing in what should have been ten players in one window because without that we didn’t have a squad – That’s out and out incompetent transfer policy over an extended period. No club should ever be replacing that number of players in such a short time as you have to buy from what’s limitedly available at that time, pay over the odds where selling clubs know you are desperate, on top of which you have a lot of settling in issues all at the same time.
Irving is already a moderate success, put him on a longer contract and his value likely doubles. It remains to be seen if he tears it up as he only made his first start last weekend. If we were to make only £10m on every player that we bought in maybe it would be us in the top half of the table and still in cups instead of out of everything and languishing in 15th. We repeatedly shoot ourselves in the foot by behaving like dinosaurs while our competitors don’t because they’re up and with the times.
You’ll always the voice of reason on here with your comments John.
I was about to say why don’t you blog for this site but no don’t do it mate!
Love your posts John, at least you have some kind understanding of what should and needs to be done. Seems the writers here spend most of their day just bashing our hammers at every opportunity instead of supporting them. Hopefully they will get a dose of their own medicine. I’d like to see Martin playing for any kind of team so we can criticise his performance in the same way he so freely does without thought for the person he has taken aim at this week. Its just down right disrespectful, but hey, that’s this place all over. Please keep being the voice of reason John, COYI!!
Spot on!! ..
Im not sure you have been influenced in your opinion by the size of the fee or reputation of Andy Irvine or if you actually scouted him on his performances. Seems to me that a player whose performance against Chelsea were picked out for praise by pundits and ex premier league players deserves more respect by an influencer who holds a season ticket
What an absolute non-story. Maybe we should all start criticising Martin for his writing in the same way he criticises others. He definitely isn’t an influencer as his opinions aren’t that relevant. He is however a hack that just produces rubbish on a slow news day so he can post something irrelevant for clicks to earn his share of the spoils. I’ll leave the rest of my critique for others to post, as I’m sure there is plenty to mention!!
Give him a chance ,I’d sooner see a trier like him who can keep his head in the right place for the whole of the game ,good squad player in general.
For me there were flashes in the Fulham game (late sub for Soler), mainly his passing variety and range, most of which on that day were forward and first time, round the corner etc. I think with confidence he will be more progressive than our other CM options