The Transfer Window

Bazshuayi

I'd like more than one. Maybe Broja and Dennis as he's reportedly got a cheap price on him after relegation. Like Luke though I'd prefer Toney

Lukerz

Interestingly, we tried to sign Aguerd in January but were rejected. Clearly played the long game & got our man.

We also wanted Broja in January, but a deal was too complicated with the loan at Southampton. Again, played the long game & look like we want to go back in for him now.

Identify players, stay patient, try & sign players at appropriate time. What is Newman doing?

PrestonHammer

Newman's gone to bed early, a big day tomorrow and all that.

OldCastleSwift

Bazshuayi said:

I'd like more than one. Maybe Broja and Dennis as he's reportedly got a cheap price on him after relegation. Like Luke though I'd prefer Toney

With Moyes seeing Bowen as an alternate striker, I'd be surprised if we signed two strikers. If the rumours re Broja are true, it looks like Moyes’s strikers will be Antonio, Broja and Bowen in an emergency.

Get a replacement for Yarmo (competition for Bowen on the wing) and I'd be happy with that.

Fortuneseeker

OCS, We also need Areola or as good as GK, new starting LB, Noble's replacement, at a bare minimum, still hoping for at least seven.

Bazshuayi

OldCastleSwift said:

Bazshuayi said:

I'd like more than one. Maybe Broja and Dennis as he's reportedly got a cheap price on him after relegation. Like Luke though I'd prefer Toney

With Moyes seeing Bowen as an alternate striker, I'd be surprised if we signed two strikers. If the rumours re Broja are true, it looks like Moyes’s strikers will be Antonio, Broja and Bowen in an emergency.

Get a replacement for Yarmo (competition for Bowen on the wing) and I'd be happy with that.

Dennis does play on the right so he would be competition for Bowen plus hes versatile enough to play centrally too. I think he's still a wonder if he'll play to a level (in a better team) but his reported cheap release price is worth taking the risk with. He'd be my Yarmo replacement

OldCastleSwift

Bazshuayi said:

OldCastleSwift said:

Bazshuayi said:

I'd like more than one. Maybe Broja and Dennis as he's reportedly got a cheap price on him after relegation. Like Luke though I'd prefer Toney

With Moyes seeing Bowen as an alternate striker, I'd be surprised if we signed two strikers. If the rumours re Broja are true, it looks like Moyes’s strikers will be Antonio, Broja and Bowen in an emergency.

Get a replacement for Yarmo (competition for Bowen on the wing) and I'd be happy with that.

Dennis does play on the right so he would be competition for Bowen plus hes versatile enough to play centrally too. I think he's still a wonder if he'll play to a level (in a better team) but his reported cheap release price is worth taking the risk with. He'd be my Yarmo replacement

Yep, I'd be happy with Dennis I think. We'll (hopefully) have plenty of games next season so he'd get a good number of games if all goes well.

Ultimately, we want two good players for each position. Recent links could have us looking at:

Areola/Fab

Coufal/Johnson
Zouma/Dawson
Aguerd/Ogbonna
Hickey/Cresswell

Rice/JWP
Soucek/Coventry
Lanzini/Vlasic

Bowen/Dennis
Broja/Antonio
Benrahma/Fornals


A lot obviously depends on budget (Broja, Dennis and JWP would be very unlikely), but we have a couple of saleable assets (Diop and Vlasic) so it's not impossible I guess.

IronHerb

So you would pay c.£50m for JWP just to push Rice?

WHU_Champo_league_in_7_years

Can't see us signing Ward-Prowse, just going to be too expensive

OldCastleSwift

IronHerb said:

So you would pay c.£50m for JWP just to push Rice?

Not just to push Rice, but to replace him next season.

Let's not kid ourselves that Rice will be here for much longer. Getting JWP now would improve our midfield straight away, and also go some way to limit the impact of Rice's departure.

buffybegood

OldCastleSwift said:

Lanzini/Vlasic

A lot obviously depends on budget (Broja, Dennis and JWP would be very unlikely), but we have a couple of saleable assets (Diop and Vlasic) so it's not impossible I guess.

If you're getting rid of Vlasic, wouldn't he then need replacing?

That would still only be a squad of 22, plus any youngsters (other than Coventry) that we included. The 5 subs rule for next season, which I hugely oppose, means some clubs (especially the likes of City and Liverpool) will be able to replace half their outfield players with fresh legs and often a negligable drop off in quality so the need for plenty of very good options off the bench becomes even more important.

I'm amazed most clubs voted for this as a rule change as it simply plays to the hands of the clubs that already have really good squads, further advantaging them. Why would Moyes (which he's on record as doing I believe), who barely used subs tactically because there was such a drop off in class beyond our starting 11, vote for something that would help other clubs but not us?

OldCastleSwift

WHU_Champo_league_in_7_years said:

Can't see us signing Ward-Prowse, just going to be too expensive

Realistically, I can't either, but I think we need to have one eye on Rice's departure when we sign our next CM. JWP is a good player but also a good captain; something we'll need in Noble and Rice's absence.

Yeoldhammer

JWP isn't coming to West Ham absolute fantasy, if he moves from Southampton it will be to a bigger club. We are not stumping up the 60m odd that Southampton would want.

buffybegood

I'm really not sure I get the interest in JWP. If he comes in, he starts, no question. No way are we trumping up that sort of money for a player to sit on the bench. Does that mean Soucek is dropped, or are we changing formation to a 4-3-3? Or would we use JWP as a 10 (in the middle of the 3 in the 4-2-3-1 we usually play)? If so, then he's hardly an option to provide cover/competition to Rice and Soucek.

I don't see him as being a similar player to Rice or Soucek, and so if one of those is being rested or is out injured or suspended, would he play well with the other one in the "2" of our preferred formation? Not saying we should have gone for him, but Bissouma would have fitted the role much better imo, a much better fit for the way we play, who could have rotated with Rice or Soucek without a noticable drop off in quality.

JWP, despite his attributes, doesn't ever strike me as physically imposing in the way that Rice and Soucek do as part of that "2", and so really isn't a suitable option when one of those is out. So even without his huge price tag I'm not sure JWP is quite what we're looking for, and priced as he is, with the other requirements we desperately need to bring in during this window, I just don't see him as in any way shape or form a sensible or realistic target for this window.

OldCastleSwift

buffybegood said:

OldCastleSwift said:

Lanzini/Vlasic

A lot obviously depends on budget (Broja, Dennis and JWP would be very unlikely), but we have a couple of saleable assets (Diop and Vlasic) so it's not impossible I guess.

If you're getting rid of Vlasic, wouldn't he then need replacing?

That would still only be a squad of 22, plus any youngsters (other than Coventry) that we included.

I'm working off the rumours that Moyes wants to sign 5 or 6 more after Aguerd. We could probably do with more, but I think I'd rather have a core squad of 22 players of equal quality than a squad of 25 of which the manager only trusts 14 of them, which is what I think we've had under Moyes.

I would imagine Oko-Flex, Alese/Baptiste, Chesters and Ashby will make up the numbers on the bench.

OldCastleSwift

What do people think the budget is, by the way?

Recent windows suggests that start with a £50m-£60m kitty. We supposedly made £50m bids in January, so you'd imagine that this rolls over to the summer. Plus the minimum £20m that Herbie recorded as a result of the EL run last season, are we looking at £130m? Pretty sure I read that Kretinsky's investment cleared the debt so we may more than that?

But working on that figure, we have £100m to spend after Aguerd. Strong rumours of a £30m bid for Broja, which if we assume for a second is successful, and we activate Areola's release clause (£11m), we'll have c.£60m to bring in a LB, CM and AM, plus any free agents (we continue to be linked with Lingard and Januzaj).

Pearces_Left_Foot

OCS I think i heard the figure was £150 Mio but i suppose its about the structure of the deals ie how much we cough up upfront and how much is in structured payments. We should have plenty of wiggle room on wages

alderz

There are some articles suggesting that Christian Eriksen has rejected Man Utd as he doesn't want to leave London, and that we're now interested too.

Slacker

Yeoldhammer said:

JWP isn't coming to West Ham absolute fantasy, if he moves from Southampton it will be to a bigger club. We are not stumping up the 60m odd that Southampton would want.

Mmm, great to have that direct contact with the board on here😂

alderz

Yeah, Yeold, how dare you speculate on a transfer speculation thread

Slacker

Pretty sure that wasn’t speculation, more absolute certainty.

OldCastleSwift

alderz said:

There are some articles suggesting that Christian Eriksen has rejected Man Utd as he doesn't want to leave London, and that we're now interested too.

Free, isn't he? An absolute no-brainer if ever there was one.

That said, I can imagine Spurs being interested and he'd almost certainly chose them over us/Brentford.

OldCastleSwift

Slacker said:

Pretty sure that wasn’t speculation, more absolute certainty.

I think most people accept that anything posted on a football forum is an opinion. As you've rightly said in the past, no-one on here knows what goes on in the boardroom, or what players or agents think, so I think it's safe to assume that statements like Yeold's are just opinions and are not claiming to be fact.

WHU_Champo_league_in_7_years

alderz said:

There are some articles suggesting that Christian Eriksen has rejected Man Utd as he doesn't want to leave London, and that we're now interested too.

Showed his class at Brentford, would be a great addition

Expat_Hammer

alderz said:

There are some articles suggesting that Christian Eriksen has rejected Man Utd as he doesn't want to leave London, and that we're now interested too.

Considering how much flack some of the players are getting from supposedly their own fans, would you want to go there

Slacker

OldCastleSwift said:

Slacker said:

Pretty sure that wasn’t speculation, more absolute certainty.

I think most people accept that anything posted on a football forum is an opinion. As you've rightly said in the past, no-one on here knows what goes on in the boardroom, or what players or agents think, so I think it's safe to assume that statements like Yeold's are just opinions and are not claiming to be fact.

Blimey,it was a light hearted comment.
Getting to be that you can’t have a giggle on here without some being miffed.
C’mon we’re all grown ups.

WHU_Champo_league_in_7_years

OldCastleSwift said:

What do people think the budget is, by the way?

Recent windows suggests that start with a £50m-£60m kitty. We supposedly made £50m bids in January, so you'd imagine that this rolls over to the summer. Plus the minimum £20m that Herbie recorded as a result of the EL run last season, are we looking at £130m? Pretty sure I read that Kretinsky's investment cleared the debt so we may more than that?

But working on that figure, we have £100m to spend after Aguerd. Strong rumours of a £30m bid for Broja, which if we assume for a second is successful, and we activate Areola's release clause (£11m), we'll have c.£60m to bring in a LB, CM and AM, plus any free agents (we continue to be linked with Lingard and Januzaj).

From transfermarkt:

21/22: In = £68mil, Out = £4mil
Net spend = £64mil

20/21: In = £50mil, Out = £41mil
Net spend = £9mil

19/20: In = £110mil, Out = £50mil
Net spend = £60mil

18/19: In = £91mil, Out = £13mil
Net spend = £78 mil

So if you consider that the 20/21 season was the COVID fallout season, the sweat spot for us is around £65mil Net spend a season

If you also factor in we've just earnt about £20mil plus from Europa in prize money only (so extra with gate receipts and money spent at games from fans) and that we've released approx £200k p/w off our wage bill already....I'd expect to be spending net around £80mil to £100mil, but I'm going to go with the former to manage expectations

Aguerd - £30mil
Areola - £10mil
Broja - £30mil

So that's £70mil off the bat, then we'd only really need a LB and a CM

Diop will probably fetch £10mil, I'm sure we'd get a couple million for Masuaku, then potentially a loan fee for Vlasic (or a permanent sale)....and maybe a few youth will go for some small fees....let's just say we could realistically raise £20mil in sales...so we'd be at around £50mil net

So maybe we have £30mil to £50mil on CM, LB and then another winger (of Vlasic goes)

Maybe it'll be more....and I'm hoping it is, but we still need to be sensible here or we could get another Vlasic situation

OldCastleSwift

Good breakdown Champo.

And your last point is important; it's not just about how much we spend, but how we spend it.

Vlasic, based on what we've seen so far, has proven to be a terrible bit of business. Maybe deserves a another season and time in his preferred position, but Moyes just hasn't seemed to fancy him at all.

Fortuneseeker

As P_L_F posted earlier I heard, sorry no sources, there was a rumour of about £150m to spend. For every player who now leaves you would have thought we need to bring someone in? This is in addition of course to the seven the papers are reporting.
Wages aside Eriksen is on a free.

WHU_Champo_league_in_7_years

In: £130mil
£30mil - Aguerd
£30mil - Broja
£10mil - Areola
Free - Eriksen
£30mil - Sangare
£30mi - Raum

Out: £30mil
£10mil - Diop
£15mil - Vlasic
£5mil - Masuaku

GK: Areola/Fab
RB: Coufal/Johnson
LB: Raum/Cresswell
CB: Zouma/Aguerd/Dawson/Oggy
CM: Rice/Soucek/Sangare/Lanzini/Coventry
AM: Bowen/Fornals/Eriksen/Benrahma
CF: Broja/Antonio

Easy this transfer stuff, make it happen