The View From Away – Is this Ambition from West Ham?
By Scott Davis
Just back from a great weekend with 80 West Ham fans in Las Vegas. While I don’t have a final total, some reasonable money raised for charity, and we grew the fan interactions a great deal. Lovely to finally have an image of ExWHUemployee on Twitter (who looks SURPRISINGLY like our own Jeremiah Carson).
One of the highlights was an interview with Jonathan Spector. One of the comments made in the interview is that West Ham have shown more ambition in the past couple of years. I want to take that apart a bit.
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The club did spend money this summer. Not the hundreds of millions of pounds that some folks wanted, but money nonetheless. Yes, Arnie is gone replaced by Haller, and Fornals is in (clearly to be the young and growing replacement to the departed Nasri).
A few keepers in (clearly just as emergency backups for Fabianski while Trott and Anang develop). Then Ajeti and Cardoso as young players with futures. Looking at transfermark.com, a sum of inputs was nearly $91M and a sum of outputs was around $52M. For a club that suggested they had $25M to spend, they went over that by $24M roughly (NB, I’m using USD as those are the best figures I can find. Apologies to my UK friends).
From a POV of ambition where Harry McGuire selling for nearly $100M, you can argue the club didn’t spend enough. I would argue that the club spent WELL. West Ham cannot throw $100M around for one player. That would leave us in the world of Bolton and Bury in a hurry. The players we bring in must fit the budget and the roles well.
I fully expected Ogbonna to be gone and another hidden gem like Balbuena to be found for very low money who could execute well. However, not moving him indicates that the person wasn’t out there. Ergo Oggy stays.
Next. What positives come to mind from the Brighton draw?. dark
Without disrespect, there were no completely goofy buys. No Hugill’s, no Sanchez’s, no Nasri’s. Younger, hungrier, and developing players at a good price were brought in. While it will take time (and this is a three-year process for Pellegrini) the option to improve is there. It’s up to the players now.