West Ham Squad Planning 2020

With the season wrapped and the COVID-affected transfer market re-opened, let’s have a look at what we’ve got, how long we’ve got it for, and what we can or should be doing in the next few windows.

Here’s the contract situation of the current squad:

I’ve limited this to people who have played some first team football at any level this season. There are others in the PL2 squad who run out in 2021 but as they’ve not been involved in any senior football yet, they don’t seem relevant to this discussion.

There are a few big questions that jump out looking at this, such as…

1) Does signing Benrahma/Eze actually make sense?

Short term? No.

Medium term? Maybe.

Long term? Yes.

Under Moyes we’ve played with two wide players and two central attackers. We currently have seventeen players on the books who can play in those positions:

Afolayan, Xande Silva, Daniel Kemp, and Nathan Holland aren’t really in the first team equation and we’re not going to be too precious about how much we get for them, so they can be written off. Ajeti’s going on loan to Celtic and Hugill can probably be sold/loaned out again but we’re going to have to basically write off his transfer fee to make his wages palatable for a Championship club.

That leaves the players who’ve been involved this season + Diangana, totalling 11 players next season for four positions. If we phase out Noble and/or go back to only considering him for a deeper CM role, that’s 10 before we even consider any upgrades:

As things stand, there isn’t room for an extra wide/creative player in the squad next season and absolutely shouldn’t be a priority if we’re working on a budget. If money wasn’t an issue, it would make sense to bring in another player like that in this window as it would allow us to ditch Noble, Wilshere, and Snodgrass next summer (presumably we’ll extend Antonio’s deal) and then Yarmolenko the following year, leaving us with 8 players for those 4 positions:

(Antonio/Anderson/Lanzini/Fornals/Bowen/Diangana/Haller/New player)

But money is an issue. We’re going to be belt-tightening to recoup our COVID losses. We spent heavily in the last two summers and in January. We’re not going to be chucking cash around.

And I don’t think it’s realistic to think that we can or will fund expensive signings by selling off our squad bloat:

• No-one is going to pay Wilshere and Yarmolenko what they’re earning here, so they’ll be difficult to shift.
• There’s not going to be much of a market for Robert Snodgrass and even if there is, we’re not getting much for him.
• Manuel Lanzini’s value has tanked after a poor season and letting him go now rather than giving him a chance to rebuild himself doesn’t make much sense to me. This is also his first full season post-ACL injury playing in a dysfunctional team — he needs a bit of time and loyalty from the club.
• Michail Antonio has come off his best season ever and with his age (30) and his injury record (horrendous), now is the peak of his value and the best time to sell. But we have consistently collapsed without him in the side and I don’t think we’ll be brave enough to live without him at this point.

Felipe Anderson is the tough one — the club are in a difficult position with him. With two years left on his contract, now is the time you’d want to sell, but, like Lanzini, he’s had an ineffectual season and would command a much smaller fee than when we signed him in 2018. Selling Andersion now would mean taking a huge loss and I don’t think selling him for, say, £25mil and spending a similar fee on Benrahma/Eze leaves us any better off.

But if we don’t, we either a) play him for another season and then sell him next summer when he only has a year left on his current deal, b) give him a contract extension at 28, probably on massive wages, or c) keep him until he leaves on a free. None of those are ideal outcomes.

I think the way to play it is to test the market for him in this window. If we don’t receive any offers we like then we keep hold of him and give him minutes until January. If he plays out of his skin, great: we sign him up to a longer deal. If he plays well but we decide he’s not a long term fit for what we want, we shop him around in that January window where he has 18 months left on his contract rather than 12. If he’s terrible then we’re not really in a worse position than we are now and we’ve not lost anything by giving him a chance to sort it out.

All of which is a long way of saying that I think we’re lumbered with our 11 current options for the front four positions for next season at a minimum and realistically we’re going to only be able to get rid of 3 of those for the 2021/22 season.

If we were flush with cash, you’d bring your new player in, decide to eat the wages of Wilshere etc for another year and just let them sit out. Signing another player to fill one of those slots should be way down the list though because there are much more urgent problems that need addressing.

Even if we are intent on bringing an extra attacker, that player should be a potential Antonio replacement, not an Anderson/Lanzini type. But buying a 12th attacker full-stop would be overkill when we’ve got problems with:

2) The Men Between the Sticks

We have 4 old goalkeepers + one younger GK who only has half a season of first team football in League One under his belt. 3 of them are out of contract next summer:

We need to start thinking about succession planning

By the time their contracts expire, Roberto and Martin will be 35, Fabianski will be 36. In an ideal world, we send Nathan Trott out on loan again (I’d try to get him to Swansea — manager with a track record of youth development, progressive style of football, had Freddie Woodman on loan as number 1 last year so have an open space), play through as we are until summer 2021, let all three of the expiring contracts leave the club, and move ahead with Trott/Randolph as #1 and #2 as we develop Joseph Anang to take Randolph’s spot.

In reality what I think happens: Fabianski gets signed to an extension, we spend a fortune on Jack Butland to be his successor, Nathan Trott gets lost in loan purgatory and then gets released.

While that wouldn’t be my preferred way of dealing with it, whichever way you slice it, we need at least one GK who isn’t in their mid-30s in the next two windows.

3) The Iron Curtain

There’s a similar sort of issue with the central defenders in the squad:

3 senior options, plus Winston Reid (who is following the yellow brick road until January at the earliest), Aji Alese (who managed 10 appearances on loan at Accrington Stanley this season), Goncalo Cardoso (who has been filling in at LB in the PL2 squad), Rice (who can cover those spots), and Cresswell (who can play on the left of a back 3).

Balbuena fell out of favour under Pellegrini and clearly isn’t rated by Moyes. Selling him now would make sense, but we paid peanuts for him in the first place; hanging onto Balbuena for another season as cover and ultimately losing him on a free next year isn’t the end of the world.

Ogbonna and Reid should absolutely be let go in 2022 though, so we need to bring in at least two long-term CB in the next two windows, 3 if we don’t think Alese or Cardoso are going to make the grade. That’s assuming the plan is to persist with a back four. If we’re going to regularly use 3 CBs in the team, we’d need an extra player in the squad.

The situation with the full-backs is equally messy.

Currently, we’ve got 4 players for 2 positions, plus maybe Cardoso, which on the face of it is ok…

… but all of them other than Johnson have had disappointing seasons. Selling Masuaku would be great just to get his long contract off the books, but I think we’re probably stuck with Cresswell. I don’t have a massive problem with that as long as we bring in a first choice LB and Cresswell drops down to the bench most weeks.

If we can find a taker for Fredericks, I don’t think getting rid of him and signing another RB is a bad move, provided that it doesn’t block Ben Johnson’s pathway to the first team; he deserves a chance to establish himself as a starting player.

4) The Engine Room

Another area we’re under-stocked in:

For the last few games of the season, Noble played in that secondary striker role but even if we go back to using him in the middle of the park, that’s 3 regulars + Wilshere, Cullen, and Coventry (with Snodgrass and Lanzini as potential cover options).

Relying on Wilshere isn’t even worth considering. Cullen’s had a good season at Charlton but I’m not sure he can play as part of a 2-man midfield in the PL and I’d have concerns over his athleticism in certain circumstances. I’ve not seen enough of Coventry to know how ready he is.

Then there’s Rice — we need to make peace with the fact that he is leaving at some point soon. In a perfect world, we’d have his replacement in-house before he goes, so we don’t end up getting held to ransom by clubs who know we’re desperate. But perhaps we feel like we can’t adequately replace him without the transfer fee he’d command, so that can be stuck on the to-do pile.

In sheer numbers terms, we can probably scrape through next season without investment in this area. In quality terms, it desperately needs attention and has done for the better part of the last decade. One starting level central midfielder now would be great because we could shed the contracts of Noble, Wilshere, and Snodgrass in one fell swoop next summer without having to manically dash about for replacements.

TL;DR

My order of priorities for this window would be:

1. A minimum of one young central defender to develop who is capable of playing rotation minutes. Two if we can ditch Balbuena.
2. A mobile central midfielder of some description; we desperately need an injection of pace in central areas. If Cullen is deemed a viable Premier League CM, we can delay this signing until next summer.
3. Sort out a plan for a long-term GK. If we don’t think that’s Trott, we can get by for one more year, but the wheels need to be put in motion for a replacement now.

Once that’s sorted, you’re onto one-in, one-out stuff:

• A potential successor for Cresswell if we can sell Masuaku. A back-up option for Johnson if we can sell Fredericks. I’d be fine with a short-term fix at RB like a loan of a more established player while we give Johnson a chance to cement a starting role.
• Decide if we want to sell high or Antonio or give him a new contract. I can understand wanting to consolidate what we’ve got given the uncertainty around everything but we need to be careful about the terms of any extension. Either way, we should have one eye on a future replacement for Antonio before we spend a penny on further creative midfielders or wingers.
• Consider what a post-Rice world looks like for this squad. Who do we have lined up to take over the reins once he’s gone? (This one gets bumped up the list depending on how quickly he wants to leave).
• If there are attractive offers to move on Anderson/Yarmolenko/Lanzini, then we can go and buy a Benrahma or an Eze type, but I don’t think we should sign anyone who blocks Diangana’s route into the first team. He played his best football for WBA from the left this season, has been every bit as good in the Championship as Benrahma/Eze have, and is a better player than Jarrod Bowen, who we spent 20 million quid on in January. It makes zero sense to go out and sign one of these players if it’s at the expense of minutes for Diangana. The grass isn’t always greener.
• If, inexplicably, all our other business is attended to, then we can start think about a third choice centre forward. But don’t hold your breath.