West Ham hierarchy will dust themselves down and start working on EFL club targets today with ten days left in the domestic transfer window.
The Hammers failed in their last-ditch attempt to sign Chelsea centre back Fikayo Tomori on loan with the player saying no ten minutes before the deadline closed.
David Moyes will now look at Championship targets to build up his squad which does not have the depth to last the whole season.
West Ham have lost Pablo Zabaleta, Carlos Sanchez, Roberto, Sead Haksabanovic, Jeremy Ngakia, Ablian Ajeti, Jordon Hugill, Grady Diangana, Josh Cullen and Jack Wilshere from their squad with only Vladimir Coufal as the only addition.
Felipe Anderson could still leave West Ham as the Portuguese window doesn’t close until 15th October.
Xande Silva has been sent on a season-long loan to Greek side Aris Thessaloniki FC while Winson Reid looks like he is staying in the MLS with Sporting Kansas City with no immediate return.
That leaves Moyes with just 20 senior players, which includes three goalkeepers including David Martin.
Moyes could yet revive his Redbull model looking for young hungry players in the Championship. He needs to find the likes of Jarrod Bowen or a Michail Antonio but in the positions, we are weak in.
West Ham raised £26m in outbound sales over the transfer window but only spent £5m of that signing the Slavia Prague right back.
We signed Cardoso for £2.5 million. Is he not better as a fourth choice centreback than a championship player or have we signed another expensive dud?
Young hungry players from the championship cost 15m up
And the price of every player in that league went up at midnight
Total shambles as normal, the only granger that will fix this club is one of ownership
That Leaving transfer business to the last day worked out well ..👏.beggars belief
Looking at the list of players we’ve lost and (thankfully, in the case of Anderson) are about to lose, putting Cullen and Diangana to one side, we won’t actually miss very many of those players, even with a paper-thin squad. Perhaps we should’ve hung on to Silva.
I’d be staggered if Moyes couldn’t turn up one or two from the EFL and our U18s and 23s that would have more impact than Anderson, Wilshere, Sanchez et al.
I’m looking forward to seeing who we can bring over the next couple of weeks.
Well said ljd1980!
I quite pleased we haven’t just signed a load of players for the sake of it and we’ve managed to offload a bunch off bit part players.
The only disappointment was Cullen going as I thought he might be first choice back up to Rice & Soucek. Maybe he didn’t show Moyes enough in training, who knows.
In the wing back roles we have Johnson, Coufal, Masuaku, Ashby & Fredericks.
Battling for the 3 central defensive roles we have Ogbonna, Balbuena, Diop, Cresswell & Alese.
I’m still not sure we have enough cover for Rice, Soucek & Fornals (not sure about Noble this season but he’s often proved us wrong in the past).
For the 3 attacking spots we have Antonio, Bowen, Yarmolenko, Haller, Snodgrass + youngsters like Holland maybe.
All in all I’m not too unhappy, maybe we will add one or two from the lower divisions, maybe not. Our fans moan when we sign loads of players and moan when we don’t. They moan when youngsters aren’t given a shot and then they moan that we are not buying players which would push those young players further down the list. Why are we always so certain that a player from a mid table side in the French league would be better than what we already have?
Totally agree with you Alan, well said.
Well said Alan, spot on
Totally agree Alan. I hope Moyes unearths a couple of gems. Bowen has been a success so far.
I do get fed up of the whinging fans. The board invested so much for Pellegrini and looked what happened there! For me, the biggest disappointment is Haller. Hopefully he can up/change his game to be a more effective striker.
Agree with the last 6 comments. COYI.
Young and hungry? We all Know Dawson will come in
As a stop gap – on a low transfer fee and low-ish wages – that might be ok. Rome wasn’t built in a day, Neither was Moyes’ Everton side that used to take at least 4 points every season from West Ham.
Craig Dawson 🤬
If Tweedledum and Tweedledee are as skint as they claim, then looking for reasonably priced people from the Championship is a solid way to go. OK, Bowen cost £20m and change, but I think he’s more than proving to be a bargain. There must be equally adept defenders looking to make a move up a level who would be willing to give us a chance. It’s better to try and find those type of players, hungry for the chance and, more importantly, who would come in and disrupt the team’s togetherness, that we need to be looking at right now.
Ok let’s say that this has been planned all along and that David Moyes is true to his beliefs that there is good young talent in the Championship so staying completely away from Craig Dawson and sadly Spurs bound Joe Rodon this would be my list to choose from to get us back to strength in depth
Goalkeeper Raya (Brentford) Butland (Stoke) Bentley (Bristol City)
Left Wing Back Henry (Brentford) Manning (QPR) Aarons (Norwich) Reach (Wednesday)
Central Defence Pinnock (Brentford) Kongolo (Huddersfield) Fry (Boro) Cooper (Millwall) Worrall (Forest)
Def/Mid Billing (Bournemouth) Pearson (Preston) Chalobah (Watford)
Midfield DaSilva (Brentford) Cook (Bournemouth) Swift (Reading) Allen (Stoke)
Att/mid Brooks (Bournemouth) Wallace (Millwall) Cantwell (Norwich) Johnson (Preston) Powell (Stoke)
Striker Puscas (Reading) Collins (Luton) Diedhou (Bristol City) Assombalonga (Boro) Armstrong (Blackburn)
Obviously there will be some in there that others will disagree with but my point is that we could pick up the players we need from the championship as back up to what is a very strong 1st X1
Have to see if we pick up a couple of these (Cook, Worrall or Chalobah especially), I’d be happy. Championship has been a good hunting ground in the past (Cresswell, Antonio & Bowen). Chance for some players to to prove they were too good to go down at the end of last season or good enough to make the step up. Trust in Moyes, he knows what he’s doing. After the last 3 games, with a couple of new additions and a chance given to some of our youngsters, I think we’ll be in for a good season