The sharp-eyed among you will notice the irony in Liverpools’ reported interest in Mohammed Kudus. West Ham’s gifted Ghanaian is said to want a move north to the Premier League champions, having been well off his best at London stadium this summer. The Hammers explain the Kudus conundrum away be stating- conveniently – that he’s only able to play on the right, in Jarrod Bowen’s favoured position .
As suggested today in hammers.news, Three clubs are interested but no bids are on the table just yet. Whether that is simply West Ham’s method of talking up the price before Kudus’ release clause kicks in come 1st July – we’ll see but Chairman David Sullivan is well known for his negotiating style.
However ‘if’ – as suggested -West Ham plan to sell Kudus to Liverpool, the principal reason given by the Irons is that Jarrod Bowen has priority on the right hand side, Kudus’ favoured position.
Well, in case you’d not noticed by now, Liverpool have one Mohammed Salah who is not going to be displaced any time soon again from Kudus’ favourite position. So Kudus will have to adapt better than he did at West Ham or else he’s going to be kicking his heels much of the time at Anfield but on better pay than at London Stadium. That will be his challenge when signing for the Premier League Champions.
West Ham appear reluctant to admit it is simply time to cash in on the original £38.5 million which they paid Ajax two years ago. £40m-plus profit after agents’ payments and amortisation will put a healthy glow on the PSR stats and help provide Potter’s trading float this summer.
But – as for Kudus only being able to play on the right – the jury’s out on that one. Go back far enough in his Ajax career and he was a central attacking figure I believe. Will be something of an ‘epic fail ‘by successive Hammers’ managers to see him blossom as a number 10 with Liverpool. But somehow you know that’s what will happen.
Players like Kudus need to play in teams that look to win and not play systems of safety first slow ball. As much as I want him to stay his career is short so spending time where he isn’t utilised fully shouldn’t make any sense to him.
For years now we’ve been safety first systematic with a couple of flair players to make something happen. The PL is past that theses days, it’s not an option anymore with most coaches able to nullify that sort of threat with a well balanced team. We don’t have balance when commonly using up to eight defensive minded players.
It’s actually a nonsense take though.
Kudus himself has publicly spoke many times about how his preferred position is a central attacking role. He’s said he sees himself as a “No 10” as he’s “played that role for his entire life” and it’s only been “the last few years” (with Ajax and West Ham) that they’ve moved him out wide or in a striker role.
Time to let him go, but I would prefer he went to Saudi than another premiership club
Kudus obviously has the ability, that’s the frustrating thing. He has switched off this season and a team like West Ham can’t accommodate that. As you say if he goes to a bigger club and plays we just know it will be the Kudus of his first season with us when he was unplayable sometimes. Just like every time West Ham has had a bunch of really good players we can’t afford to be struggling with relegation threat and not competing if we want to keep them.
Really feels a dangerous time with so much rebuilding required and just Potter, his mate and Sullivan /Brady to do it. No money and no Steiden who mostly got the predominantly pretty good targets in. Now it’s going to back to speculative low bids and repeated failure?
Surely most West Ham fans realise that Kudos was only likely to be at West Ham for 2 seasons, before moving on to a ‘bigger’ club, competing for trophies etc.
So there’s no shock or feeling of betrayal as Kudos will hopefully return a decent fee and go on to have a successful career.
Meanwhile West Ham can spend that cash on a couple of prospects, as the new regime build a cohesive squad.