January Buys for West Ham
West Ham need help this January ladies and gentlemen. There’s no two ways about it. What the problem is we can’t exactly be sure.
The squad on paper looks like they should be in the top half but on form so far (despite the recent few) they should be relegated. A solution must be found in January and though January tends to be the village of the damned West Ham can’t afford going down in May and so action must be taken.
The defense has improved in recent matches and is the strongest part of the team at this point. As of now Bilic doesn’t appear to have found a formation that he’s entirely comfortable with. However he hasn’t been helped by the teams failure to play above a League One level so far but it does make tactical and transfer assessment’s hard to make.
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The team appears relatively solid in terms if the center back position. Right back though is up in the air. There are of course two options for this: one, the Tony Pulis method of just playing a center back at every position across the four and turning the game into a scrum. The second option however would be to simply buy a right back. Aaron Cresswell that beautiful diligent professional that he is has the left-back position tied down. A right back of some fortitude and talent would be great.
Options On The Right
Joao Cancelo the Portuguese at Valencia can play pretty much every position along the right side. His specialty though is playing as a right wing back. He is a diligent defender and an able bodied attacker. At 22 he represents a good investment for money and could easily help the team moving forward. It seemed for a period that Bilic had been happy with the switch to 3-5-2 but now he is back on the 4-3-3 and 4-2-3-1 bandwagon. Any of these formations Cancelo fits into like a charm. He should be available for between 15 and 20 million pounds.
Tim Jedjav of Bayern Leverkusen is an old fashioned defender. He has all of the same abilities as Cancelo and edges him slightly in terms of my favor. The German is a good technical player with high levels of concentration (ever important for a defender). Being from Germany he would have less trouble adapting to the pace of the Premier League which is similar to the Bundesliga and to the climate in England. He should be available at about 17 million pounds.
I have already suggested on many occasions the midfielders that West Ham should add and so we’ll waste no further time discussing that here. PLus there are more pressing positions to fill.
Up Front
Finally, strikers. The strike force resembles a pensioners home and not a fearsome group of able bodied goal scorers. Quite frankly so far this season they should be ashamed of themselves. When they’re not missing guilt edged chances they’re being too lazy to put themselves in the position to receive those chances in the first place. West Ham’s supporters deserve better. They deserve players with fire.
Next: Summer Transfers Reviewed
The players that I think it would be best for West Ham to add here are both players on loan. There are rumors that both Michy Batshuayi and Antony Martial are available for loan this January and it would be simply criminal if West Ham didn’t make that happen. They should enquire about Martial first. I believe in 5 years we may be talking about him as one of the best strikers in the world.
West Ham need to try and make something of this window and to get a player of that quality would be doing exactly that.