West Ham are REALLY bad and not enough people are noticing
West Ham are not having a good season by any stretch of the imagination. In fact, they’re having a really really bad one. If the bottom 3 teams’ fate wasn’t already sealed due to the fact that they’re some of the worst teams to ever play in the Premier League, West Ham would be in a serious relegation scrap.
They’re currently sat on 36 points having played 33 games with a chance of slipping to 17th in the table if high-flying Wolves are able to win their game in hand. If you were to tell any Hammers fan at the start of the season that this would be their predicament going into the last few games of the season, they would have laughed you out of the room.
Everyone said that West Ham had a pretty good transfer window going into the 2024/25 season. Fullkrug, Summerville, Guido Rodriguez, Kilman, Todibo and Wan-Bissaka were all viewed as players who would instantly lift the ceiling of West Ham’s already talented squad whilst there was hope that players like Luis Guillherme and Summerville would be able to take the mantle off Bowen and Kudus to become the future of the club.
West Ham spent big in the summer and seemed to have taken a step back. Yes, they have had injuries but so has every club in the Premier League - it is the directors and owners’ job to ensure that the squad is in the best place possible to make sure that these injuries don’t completely derail a season so they can’t blame anyone but themselves for this. The managerial appointment of Lopetegui in the summer made no sense in the summer and makes even less sense now.
The directors promised that after the dismal end to Moyes’ reign as West-Ham boss, the club would be moving forward as a young and exciting brand that would be playing enthralling and entertaining football. But then one of the most pragmatic and boring managers was signed to be the one to carry this out. Obviously, it didn’t work and it never looked close to working. Lopetegui’s West Ham looked unfit and tactically incompetent - to many football fans it was surprising he lasted as long as he did as he was finally sacked in January having accrued 1.2 points per game through the campaign.
A waste of money and a complete waste of time. Hiring and firing Lopetegui would’ve been pretty expensive in itself and so the hammers couldn’t afford to mess up their appointment…
Now you would’ve been naive to expect Graham Potter to come in and instantly turn the ship around. He was initially dealing with a squad missing a few key players due to injury and West Ham did little in January to alleviate this - signing an out-of-favour Evan Ferguson in hopes he would reignite the flame he had whilst Potter was at Brighton.
However, where West Ham find themselves currently is still inexcusable. Many of the key players have come back and yet if you were to suggest that West Ham still look like they haven’t improved under Graham Potter, I wouldn’t say you were incorrect. They aren’t ‘exciting’ and they barely look like they’ve got any sort of identity about them - it’s been an extremely forgettable campaign for hammers fans and they need to thank their lucky stars there are 3 teams below them who have been completely hopeless.
Now, I think Graham Potter is a talented manager and if you give him time and patience, he will succeed in making West Ham an entertaining and exciting team in the future. But, how long can the club wait for this to happen? How long do they have to be woeful until progress is finally evident?
It cannot be understated how important this summer’s transfer window is. A complete rebuild is necessary if fortunes are going to sway, the squad is old and on some pretty remarkable wages considering their current ability and the midfield and strikeforce needs a complete overhaul. I’m sure West Ham have the money to make some big signings however they did this last summer and look what happened.
West-Ham’s recruitment department needs to forget about the big names and start being intelligent. Go for diamonds in the rough - fast, athletic players that are young and yet to breakthrough to that next level which would consequently see them out of West Ham’s range. It’s not rocket science and fans of the East London club can only pray that they get it right this summer, because if not…
There is so much to do at West Ham come the end of the season. And it is absolutely pivotal to the project that it is done right. With traditional mid-table clubs such as Brenford, Crystal Palace, Bournemouth, Everton and Fulham all seeming to have taken huge strides this season, the hammers can’t afford to be left behind.
They belong in and around the top half of the table.Let’s not forget they were in-an-around the top 4 whilst also winning European silverware, just a few seasons ago. If things don’t instantly improve at the beginning of next season, it wouldn’t surprise me if Potter parted ways with the club and they were back to square one. They cannot afford for this situation to occur.
Make no mistake about it, West Ham might have the most important summer out of all the current Premier League teams. If they fail to rebuild this squad properly, they may be doomed for a long spell of mediocrity with a dark cloud of hopelessness covering the London stadium. But if they get it right, led by a gifted manager in Potter, they can be back in those European spots in no time.
