West Ham Zone View: Club risk making same mistake all over again with transfer pursuit
West Ham United’s signing of midfielder Jack Wilshere following his release from Arsenal in 2018 has come to look like a horrendous bit of business.
That sounds harsh on the player himself, of course, but it’s just that his injury problems have effectively rendered him useless to the Hammers.
That, coupled with his status as the club’s second highest earner on wages of £100,000-per-week [Source: Spotrac], makes him completely unviable moving forward.
You would’ve thought, then, that the club would shy away from another injury-prone veteran player who’s poised to leave a top team.
Apparently not.
The Daily Telegraph reported last week that the Hammers are one of the teams chasing a deal for Liverpool midfielder Adam Lallana, who is out of contract at the end of the season.
Tottenham Hotspur and Arsenal are also thought to be in the hunt, while Leicester City are said to be winning the race to bring the England international in.
This isn’t a perfect comparison, because Lallana has largely remained fit this campaign, but there are definite shades of the Wilshere deal here.
For a start, Lallana is another big earner, currently taking home £110,000-per-week at Anfield [Source: Spotrac].
In addition, over the past two-and-a-half seasons he’s made 50 first team appearances for the Reds. For Wilshere that number stands at 54.
So while the Liverpool man has been more productive recently, Wilshere’s actually got the edge in recent campaigns.
It just seems like this signing would represent the Irons’ repeating past mistakes, seemingly never learning from their errors.
Simply put, this isn’t what they need.
In other West Ham news, a former Hammers defender has given a worrying take on the Jarrod Bowen signing.