With less than 48 hours remaining of the January transfer window, it remains mostly quiet and we are not expecting too many surprises many will be disappointed to hear.
At the beginning of the window, Claret and Hugh explained that the cupboard was bare and that any inbound transfers would need to be funded by outbound sales. Nothing has changed in that approach after the club spent £90m last summer and are right at the upper limit of our FFP wage bill.
Sky Sports continue to talk about Maxi Gomez as signing in the next 24 hours but they have been saying that for over a week now, that deal is extremely unlikely and was mostly dependent on the sale of Marko Arnautovic to China before he signed a new deal with the Hammers. Celta Vido were holding out for a 50 million Euro payday and he is not available until the summer so couldn’t played for us anyway with his club fighting relegation.
There is a possibility of a late loan deal but it won’t be Youri Tielemans who is expected to join Leceister today from Monaco.
Beyond Samir Nasri who joined on a free transfer after completing his doping ban, there is unlikely to be any big surprises today or tomorrow.
I am sure West Ham will dress up Portugal U20 forward Mesaque Djú from Benfica as a big signing tomorrow but he is reported to be another free transfer and destined for the U23 squad so not a first squad addition but maybe one for the future like Xande Silvre.
The chances of Javier Hernandez joining Valencia and/or Lucas Perez joining Real Betis with no replacements in place are slim, the club have said they will not loan out players and need to line up replacements first before they allow any first-team players to leave.
The same goes for Pedro Obiang who won’t be allowed to join Fiorentina until a certain valuation is reached and a replacement is found.
One player who is available without replacement is Reece Oxford with the manager confirming this week he is free to go out on loan or be sold. Talk of £8m bids from Frankfurt and Nottingham Forrest are claimed to be premature and exaggerated in value terms but there is a small chance he could make a deadline day move with some German clubs interested.
The U23 squad are short on players due to existing loans and injuries so don’t expect too much movement there in terms of outbound loans.
The winter transfer window is likely to end as a low key affair with little to no movement by West Ham in the honest truth.
It is true that David Sullivan can be unpredictable with a last-minute surprise on deadline today with something up his sleeve but my expectations are low as it stands this morning so don’t stay up ;-).
Aw!
Tomorrow is my birthday and I had cancelled all celebrations, preferring, instead, to sit glued to the telly.
To be perfectly honest, being 64 tomorrow, apart from marveling how I ever made it, “celebrating” was not top of my list, anyway.
Bring back the good old days when performances merely matched expectations!
COYI!
I’d love to get excited about Mesaque Dju but half of me now just expects him to be the next Domingos Quina, or Reece Oxford, forced to go and play for someone else if they want to experience first team football.
Just a couple of weeks back after beating arsenal everyone including this site were saying how we are now looking like a team.pellegrini was top man maybe we all should be looking at Europe…now admittedly with 3 quite embarrassing defeats later and as ALWAYS more injuries
Now the doom and gloom has descended and its back to normal .and you cheer us up with “dont expect anything ”
Cheers👍👍
We have been lucky with other teams results or we could have been in real trouble so for the last month we have & still are only four games from the bottom three, so Pelle had better get his act together. I would have thought he would have tried to get someone else for left back how many times does he play Masuaku there before he realises the player is not a left back & never will be. The same for Hernández & Perez they are simply not good enough for the prem let’s hope the club will have money to buy in the summer
We are now in a situation where certain players who are not of premier league standard are embarrassing our club so much that it will be difficult for us to sign any reasonable replacements.
I never rated Obiang, Ogbonna or Masuaku, who were all heralded as the next level, because of their funny foreign names. I liked the idea of Hernandes coming in, because it was said that he had become a team player while in Germany, but he left that behind in Germany and is totally unsuitable for our passing game. Carroll’s latest come-back has floundered like never before, so no hope there this time.
All this means that when we need to rest players or to replace injured players from our very decent 1st. team, we lose our effectiveness ( from Heroes to Zeros ).
This season is now for survival in mid-table, and we will need to add to the squad in the summer, just to be effective next season.
Sell Hernandez, Perez, Arnautovic and Obiang they are pointless on the pitch we would be better fielding 7 players against 11 than having passengers.
Dendonker and Jimenez playing for Wolves last night. Good players. Wish we’d signed them in the last window. We were the main club being linked with them so don’t know what happened. Both at wolves on loan I think. God knows we could have done with them at the moment.
Get a left back I’ll say it again get a left back in this window, get someone who knows what there doing? Anderson never tracks back to help so we need someone who can cope with that situation Masuaku hasn’t got a clue?? And while we’re at it get rid of that 140,000 pound a week waste of time and money Hernandez? And take a punt on a honest centre forward, if Arnie’s out take a loan punt on Charlie Austin we need a Glen Murray type of centre forward we need a force in the box not a poxy do nothing “fox”???? I could go on forever who to change but honestly we need 9 more points to get to 40 and hopefully safe in the league? That’s how I’m looking at our situation now not European football???
Well I’m sorry but with no signing s and the way thing’s are going we are out of both cups as well,,, this will be another poor poor season..we will finish bottom half just above the relegation lot imo…and I for one do not want to hear the excuses.from noble or any other players….time for a break from al! Of them including m.p who is not a good after all Hugh 😁😁😁 for a minute there a month or two ago I thought we had a proper football team to be proud of but after Bournemouth and last night we are still the same old West ham !!!!!! Will it ever change !!
God