West Ham have made a statement of intent this transfer window that shows the rest of the footballing world that they mean to not only survive, but are striving to become a stable top 10 Premiership team with view of pushing for a European spot in the next few seasons.
Despite a tricky start to the season with two defeats and one win in three games, the mighty Hammers have come out all guns blazing in the transfer market which saw them sign nine new players.
When Sam Allardyce was appointed, he was given two things to achieve; get the Hammers promoted first time of asking, then keep them there while making sure they remain stable until they are due to move to the Olympic Stadium at the start of the 2016/2017 season. He has undoubtedly achieved this despite a lot of fans being unhappy with the style of football and some of the transfers he has made, namely Andy Carroll who signed injured and has had his appearances limited by injury ever since.
After last season’s poor showing in the Premier League, many fans were calling for the gaffer’s head because the team narrowly avoided relegation and played some very un-West Ham like football in the process with many believing that the club would be better off without Mr Allardyce at the helm for fear that it wouldn’t take much for the team to fall into the same dangerous pattern of poor runs and scrapping for survival. A crisis meeting was held by the directors of the club with certain changes put in place to ensure that the team would improve on results, style of football and the type of player recruited during the transfer window this summer; so an attacking coach was appointed in the shape of former player Teddy Sherringham and David Sullivan took charge of finding the right type of players to bring in during the summer’s spending on the understanding that the manger would play the new players in a new attacking and nice to watch system.
This has resulted in one of the best summer transfer windows that the Irons have seen in quite a few seasons now with a great mixture of young English talent, some great foreign imports and a few lower league gems all together vastly improved squad.
The likes of Kouyate ,Valencia, Zarate, Cresswell, Jenkinson, Poyet, Song, Sakho and Amalfitano have all been brought in and most of those are Sullivan signings, although I understand that Alex Song was pursued in secret by the manager for 6 weeks and he managed to pull it off just before the transfer window deadline, keeping it under wraps for most of the time to fend off competition from some of Europe’s bigger clubs.
Hammers fans can expect a lot of good things to come from that group of players with Zarate already showing what he can do when given some space in front of goal with a 25 yard screamer against Palace on the second week of the season, Cresswell also showing that he is a very promising left back who has slotted in perfectly into the Premiership after coming up from Championship club Ipswich, Poyet; the son of Gus Poyet also another Championship recruit from Charlton who won their player of the year award last season has shown some glimpses of good quality passing and confidence in the centre of midfield, Kouyate and Song are both really strong and talented defensive midfield players who will bring a lot of box to box play to the side, then you have World Cup star Valencia who scored all of his nation’s three goals in this summer’s competition.
Make no mistake, this Hammers team is a very big mixture or promising youth, great experience and vast amounts of talent that will give the opposition a lot to worry about and anything less than a top ten finish in May will be deemed a failure by the board. David Gold has also spoken about the summer’s spending saying “We have gone to the very limits. We have shown great ambition – it’s one of the best windows West Ham United Football club has ever achieved, this is not a squad built to survive – we are looking upwards and I hope we can even be thinking in terms of Europe for our last season at the Boleyn.” ( from his exclusive interview on Claret And Hugh)
If the manager gets his tactics right, and listens to the board, West Ham will have a great season, mark my words.
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