It was West Ham’s wonderfully nostalgic video announcement of Scamacca. Unfortunately, they spelled their new £35m signing’s name wrong - so they deleted it. Here’s an updated version:
2020 me - We're getting Braithwaite aren't we. 2022 me - He's old, he's from a big club, I know who he is, no way we're signing Braithwaite.
“Additionally, Hasenhuttl revealed on Saturday that Southampton “will definitely bring one more striker” into the club as well as Mara” Just thought I’d keep the ball moving
10 was the figure talked about at the start of the summer. Doesn’t seem too outrageous at this moment in time, couple of loans and a couple of permanent signings seems reasonably likely. Need to start moving some players on though as there won’t be enough minutes to go round for everyone at the moment.
A striker, creative attacking mid, CB and full back. You'd think at least 1, maybe even 2, of them will be a loan. If we can strengthen those 4 positions, get rid of a few of the dead wood, it will have been a brilliant summer.
Agreed. I think one of Elyounoussi and Redmond needs to go as well as Walcott. I would probably keep Djenepo as he can play LWB and with Perraud out we're short in that position at the moment.
Very hard to label this summer until the end of the season. If all these youngsters aren’t PL ready, but show signs of it, then as long as we stay up it will be considered a good summer. If some are Livramento/Broja level then it would be a brilliant summer. If we end up going down then it would have to be called a gamble that didn’t pay off and a terrible summer. Ultimately we’ve spent about £60m, we could’ve got 2 or 3 “PL ready” players with that money if it all goes tits up and the club will be criticised for that if the worst does happen (I don’t think it will)
I wouldn’t be shocked as we just have no idea about the players at this moment in time. As I’ve said before Fulham and Bournemouth look very weak to me. Forest have made some good signings on paper but who knows how they’ll gel/settle. Leeds the same with the added caveat that they’ve sold their 2 best players. The striker they get in will be very important for them Brentford, Everton and Palace are the others who are most likely to be involved in my view. Though I can see Wolves and Brighton being dark horses like Everton last year of being sucked in
I accept there's an element of risk with our strategy. However they are only unknown to the fans. The players have been thoroughly scouted and they've impressed during pre-season. I'd rather be in our position than Leeds. At the end of the day we've got a stronger squad than last season.
The bookmakers have wolves closer than I would have thought to Everton in terms of odds to go down. And I’m sure their manager appears in the top 5 or 6 most likely to go first I’m not sure what they are seeing but I don’t pay a lot of attention to wolves. I guess it is because they don’t score a lot of goals and they might be assuming that their very low goals conceded last season was an anomaly? Is xGA a thing? Did they get fortunate on that front ?
looking at Wolves signings they haven’t done much. Wasn’t aware they’d signed Nathan Collins from Burnley who I think is a great prospect at CB. Also saw that Fulham have signed Solomon from Shaktar, sure somebody (Schad maybe?) was a big fan of his
Why? I'm not making statements of fact. I'm just saying I would be surprised. That's not tempting fate.