West Ham United’s selection headache is far bigger than the injury list suggests for our opening Championship game against Burnley.
Yes, Keiber Lamadrid and Tomas Soucek are sidelined, but Nuno Espírito Santo is also expected to overlook Aaron Wan‑Bissaka, Niklas Füllkrug, Soungoutou Magassa, Maxwel Cornet and potentially, if reports are correct, Edson Álvarez and El Hadji Malik Diouf.
That’s six players, none injured, earning conservatively £250k a week between them, effectively unavailable. It’s a staggering amount of talent and money sitting idle at a time when squad depth is already stretched thin.
Diouf- sitting out the season-opener as a transfer looks increasingly likely
Even so, the reality is that Álvarez will almost certainly be forced into action, while Diouf is expected to make the bench though Ollie Scarles remains ahead of him in the pecking order, primarily in order to reduce risk of injury to Diouf given Sunderland are circling and have already had a £40m bid rejected.
With Engels available once international clearance lands, West Ham still need more signings to stabilise the squad. The club’s priority now is simple: get organised, get bodies in, and get ready.
Because once the window slams shut on September 3rd, West Ham United could look unrecognisably different and the rebuild may finally start to make sense.
We only have ourselves to blame
If we did not offer such stupid wages, when players and teams new we were desperate for signings, we would have been able to of sold these players on. But they are not stupid, high wage, past their best,they are not fools. They will just sit tight run down their contracts and then go for nothing.
They obviously feel they owe West Ham nothing
Lower your wage demands and do us all a favour and move on
One minute we’ve got too many players the next not enough it’s make up your mind time.
This is where our (hopefully) former scattergun approach to recruitment comes back bite us on the arse. All the players were recruited under the BS regime with favoured agents in play and a revolving door team managerial policy. All of the players probably have favourable contracts and who can blame them for ‘milking’ the system? Let’s hope a more financially prudent system is now in plsceX
You left out Todibo…just like Nuno !🤣
Crisis? Of those six mentioned, three weren’t available to us last season and AWB and Magassa ended up bit-part players.
We’ve since added Veltman, Solomon, and Engles (imminently), as well as Kante and Orford joining the senior squad alongside JWP.
We can also call on Earthy and Mayers, if need be.
We should bring in a couple more but, with respect, I see no crisis.
think the don’t play but still pay problem exists at all clubs Matt , £250k-a‑week is probably not considered to be a big sum at a few clubs with this problem , though i agree with you that this is an unacceptable amount in my own opinion , it’s been happening with Niklas Füllkrug and Maxwel Cornet for quite a while and no doubt with others where we’ve been subsidising the wages , don’t really know what the easy answer is as you can only get rid of them or play them but if you don’t play em you gotta pay em , perhaps we should adopt an On the Waterfront contract on the principle that we choose who works today and if they don’t work they don’t get paid ! ! ! x
You forgot Todibo