Transfer Rumours Summer 2025 1 - 10 June, 16 June - 1 September

It does raise an interesting point about how often clubs bring in managers who are not best suited to the existing playing squad requiring substantial further investment. And not just with us

 

He’ll only have one year left on his contract in a year’s time so your point doesn’t stand.

 

Not really my point though, it would have been nice to have been more prepared for the start of the season. Now we have to adjust and figure things out a month into the season. I wouldn’t mind as much if this was a rarity but we’ve been late to do business in the last 3 or 4 seasons now and I might be being generous there. I’m pretty sure when we went down last time we still played the first few games with JWP, Tella and Lavia in the squad because we are always so slow to do the things we need to do. This isn’t a one off and that’s what is frustrating on top of not really doing much so far.

 

But we didn't want to sell our best players if we didn't have too. If you want better players you often have to wait later into the window, especially when you're not spending £30-£40 million on one player and no longer in the PL. We need starting XI players, and as long as we get that before September 2nd then that's all that matters.

 

If you go by the reports so far we've been going through a list of our A list targets etc and moving from them, so it's not like we've only just started to try and sign players - it's a process where we're being knocked back (though I presume we're still trying with some of them) and waiting on the other clubs to finally move (as we did with Dibling), rather than buying any old ****e.

If you look at the #10 hunt for example -

- Rudoni (knocked back, not for sale)

So we moved to -

- Spertsyan (Russian nonsense and still unresolved, very good offer made)

So we moved to -

- Azaz (first offer knocked back, new offer supposedly gone in)

Now do we persist on our second and third target here, believing that as the window gets closer to shutting there will be movement, or do we move on to someone that we don't really want so that Deserana is happy that we've done something?

The Rudoni moves were being made weeks ago. So this idea that we "are always so slow" just doesn't really tally with any appreciation of what these situations throw up. We signed Downs and Quarshie early on. We'd love to have done the same with either Rudoni or Spertsyan, but those transactions are problematic. Likewise when you look at the wide positions with people like Scienza, who we went for a while back, but now Gladbach and Koln are muddying the waters there, so his club are delaying.

We could have got all our transfer business done very early if we bought bad players that the selling club didn't really want (and yes, I realise that leaves me open to jokes about Quarshie and Downs), but the trouble when you're trying to buy really good players is that the other club don't want to sell them, different clubs are also interested, and sometimes they're just Russian.

 

Athletic are reporting this morning that Fernandes is still West Ham’s number 1 target this week.
Have a feeling that this will go to the last day and then leave no time to replace?

 

Simple, tell them to get ****ed.