West Ham’s £100m budget curse and the transfer headaches still to be solved this summer

It’s just under two months since Declan Rice lifted the rather snazzy Europa Conference League trophy above his head in Prague, and even longer since it became extremely clear that the England international would be leaving West Ham United, providing a hefty boost to the transfer budget in the process.

The Hammers have had plenty of time to prepare for the new season – but with just over a week left until they kick off against Bournemouth, they still haven’t spent a penny of the £105m earned from Rice’s transfer to Arsenal. Or the £1.8m they got for Arthur Masuaku, come to that. As reports trickle in of a power struggle between manager David Moyes and new technical director Tim Steidten, things are starting to look a little bit bleak in east London.

West Ham have a lot of transfer business to get through, and all of it lies ahead of them. There have been abortive bids for a slew of midfielders, but it appears that Moyes and Steidten simply cannot see eye to eye on valuations or preferred targets, and the consequence is chaos. All was looking rather rosy at the tail end of the 2022/23 season, but things have changed.

So what’s on West Ham’s to-do list, where are they, and what should the solution be as they try to pick their way through a transfer window in which they have a lot of money and plenty of options, but precious little resolution? And what should they do with the players they currently have in their squad?

Incomings for the Irons

The list of Rice replacements that West Ham have supposedly put bids in for is long – as, of course, is the list of bids they’ve had rejected. The approach, frankly, looks scattergun, with midfielders of very different types namedropped in the press – a £30m offer for James Ward-Prowse was turned down, £40m or more for Conor Gallagher, plus approaches for Denis Zakaria, João Palhinha, Scott McTominay, Edson Álvarez, Youssouf Fofana and more. None have come close to signing.

According to a report in The Guardian, the primary cause of the problem is that Moyes wants a core of British players with Premier League experience, while Steidten prefers continental targets who have often never played in English football. The result is underbaked bids for a variety of players, few of whom closely resemble each other in playing style. The fact that every club they speak knows fine well that they have over £100m burning a hole in their back pocket complicates matters further – selling teams suspect they can gouge the price a little. See the Hammers’ rivals over in west London for another example of wealth proving to be an unexpected curse, as Chelsea continue their struggle to capture Brighton’s Moises Caicedo for less than £100m.

As it stands, West Ham are going through pre-season with Tomáš Souček and Lucas Paquetá as the only senior players with experience of playing in a deeper-lying role. They direly need to buy at least two midfielders, whether they’re ball-winning midfielders or more technical types – and they simply have to find a way to agree to spend the extra on the men they need. Ward-Prowse, a high-level playmaker with outstanding set piece skills, would be a fine signing at a price point north of the £30m they’ve offered, but newspaper reports suggest they are turning their attentions elsewhere. A tougher-tackling, more robust player alongside Ward-Prowse would be the obvious complement, and someone like Zakaria should fit the bill fairly well. Ultimately, Moyes and Steidten need to put their differences aside and get their job done quickly, otherwise they will be travelling down to Dorset with a very slender squad indeed.

Things looks paper thin elsewhere, too. There is a vacuum at centre forward, with Gianluca Scamacca and Michail Antonio likely leaving and Danny Ings seemingly past his prime. The only centre-forward whose name has come up in the past fortnight or so is Elye Wahi, a talented but potentially problematic forward from Montpellier who has been routinely linked with almost every Premier League side this summer. It is inconceivable that Moyes doesn’t want another striker in the squad, but the rumour mill has been silent on who it might be – perhaps because the club hierarchy can’t agree on it either.

There has also been a bid for Harry Maguire, but £20m wasn’t enough to secure the former Manchester United captain’s services, and his sky-high wages may prove to be a stumbling block as well. There are at least numbers at centre-half, although they include the injury-prone Kurt Zouma and the ageing Angelo Ogbonna. The only transfer at a more advanced stage – a £14m deal to bring Manchester City’s 19-year-old winger Carlos Borges to the club – is also on the brink of collapse after Ajax entered the bidding.

A striker and two midfielders is the bare minimum that West Ham require by the end of August – or this could be a very long season indeed.

Leaving the London Stadium

With such a small squad, there won’t be too many more departures other than the likely ones of Scamacca and Antonio. The former is being bid on by Inter Milan, with the Champions League runners-up coming in with an improved offer after an initial £17m bid was rejected, while the latter has been identified as a target by Everton after his move to Saudi side Al-Ettifaq appeared to hit the rocks. Manuel Lanzini has already followed Rice and Masuaku out of the door, on a free deal to River Plate in his case.

33-year-old Aaron Creswell is reportedly on his way to Wolves as well for a cut-price deal in the region of £2.5m, and Nikola Vlašić, who spent last season on loan at Torino, is considered expendable and may well leave. Past that point there is little scope for sales, with back-up right-back Ben Johnson looking likely to stay after early-summer speculation that he may want to move on for more minutes.

West Ham also won’t be making too much use of the loan market, with relatively few reserve players on the brink of a first-team breakthrough. Slightly more established youngsters like Flynn Downes and Conor Coventry will almost certainly be needed as first-team cover, and as such are very unlikely to be shopped to Championship clubs unless the dam finally bursts on the club’s main transfer targets.

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It could be a fairly quiet August in terms of outgoings, then, although there have been occasional rumours that Nayef Aguerd has appeared on the shopping lists of clubs like Liverpool and Spurs – but those remain rumours for now, and any interest that does exist has yet to solidify. The transfer sagas around West Ham will focus heavily on who they can get in – and when. For the Hammers’ sake, let’s hope the backroom staff can sort everything out soon.