West Ham United‘s need to focus solely on domestic competition this season presents a unique opportunity for the club.
On the one hand, the absence of European football offers a chance to consolidate their Premier League position and potentially challenge for a top-six finish. Reduced travel and a less congested fixture list can lead to massively lower player fatigue, better fitness and more time to work on tactical refinement and overall squad cohesion.
Since August 2021, the only Premier League teams to have played more competitive matches than West Ham (164) are Manchester City (179) and Liverpool (173). So maybe they could do with a break this season, and no European jaunts now means more time on the training ground for Julen Lopetegui to get his ideas across to his squad, as well as better recovery hopefully leading to fewer injuries.
Believe it or not, but this will be the first season since 2020-21 in which West Ham won’t be playing in Europe. As we all know their domestic form fell away in the last two of those three seasons, as they finished 14th and ninth in the Premier League when the team was surely capable of better
Most of the players incoming this summer have some element of International experience so the downside shouldn’t be too great: Possibly player recruitment has been that bit harder this transfer window without the prestige for players and of course no financial rewards for the club which are associated with European competition.
However, ‘We’ll be back’!
We will all miss Europe but the difference in not having the Thursday-Sunday schedule will be significant. Together with a larger squad it might be worth at least a couple of league places to us.
Good points there, especially the extra time it gives to implement a different playing culture. Fingers crossed !
All good points and I’m surprised at the level of player we’ve been able to attract. Just shows the lure of the PL and its money I suppose. However I do think one way or another we need to get back into Europe or there could be a lot of ex WHU employees in our current squad. Fingers crossed and I am quite optimistic about the season ahead. COYI.
Very optimistic this season , we have a good squad now ! No reason we cant get back into Europe . Come on lads , COYI ⚒
European qualification has to be a minimum requirement now that the club have invested heavily into an improved squad. You don’t spend that much to finish 8th, one place higher than last season, do you? The target has to be 6th.
There was a ‘predicting’ conversation on Youtube last week between Sam Allardyce and Kevin Nolan who somehow placed West Ham at 10th despite praising the transfer activity by Tim and Julen!!
I agree that it could be a blessing not to have European games this season for all the reasons quoted. Whilst it will be important to qualify for Europe this season I do think it is going to be a marathon not a sprint the players will need time to adjust to the new systems that will be implicated there is no doubt we have our best squad I have seen I don’t anticipate us winning games from the start if we do what a bonus
Agree with Steveo, it will take time. Lets not have the negative hammers jumping on the wagon of poor management, look at the money we have spent ect ect. That alone will put the players off. We have a great squad to build on, I am impressed with the small clips of the manager speaking. European nights are clearly the goal, but let’s get behind the rebuild even if we don’t gel straight away. That said I did have a cheeky look at the odds for top 4 finish……and it’s only 10/1
Our domestic form fell away because of Moyes-ball if you look at a lot of the games it was the goals we conceded that were the difference between us winning and losing, nearly all down to poor defending and that was down to Moyes tactics, we would sit off teams only start playing whe we were one or two down and we had some of the worst pressing in the league. We have world class players that would create moments every match enough to be at the upper end of the league so it will be interesting to see how Lopetegui another negative manager albeit with a different style gets the best out of them, he has no excuses and a short honeymoon period, he has bought some high quality players and we have a tough opening month Villa had a preseason similar to ours so we will have to hope we can get a good start, Palace are flying already despite losing Olise, then Man City so two Campions League teams and the most in form of the rest of the PL teams. I haven’t seen anything yet from us that shows the team have it sorted and I hope AWB and Todibo start Saturday, with Rodriguez and Summerville, Kudus isn’t the best option wide left, if we want the European finish then a good start would be great COYI !!!