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Graeme Souness namechecks West Ham United as biggest Premier League underachievers
Graeme Souness has branded West Ham United as the biggest underachievers in the Premier League so far this season with the World Cup break in action.
The Irons currently lie in 16th position having one just one of their last six games (at home to Bournemouth) and their most recent defeat coming at home to Leicester City.
The Foxes had previously been one of Souness’ weaker sides in the division along with basement club Wolves but Brendan Rodgers has turned them around to leave the Hammers in the mud.
“West Ham,” Souness said when asked who the biggest underachievers have been so far this season [talkSPORT, 14 November, 12:54pm].
“If you’d gone back a couple of weeks I’d have said Leicester. You have to throw Wolves into that too, but I’m going West Ham.”
Totally right
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A West Ham squad not overly dissimilar to the one currently at Rush Green achieved a seventh-place finish last season while making it all the way to a European semi-final in the Europa League.
So having spent £170million on new players in the summer they should be challenging around that same area and even higher this season but it has all gone horribly wrong.
Perhaps the new additions need a little more time to properly settle in at the London Stadium with the best very much still yet to come from the likes of Lucas Paqueta and Gianluca Scamacca.
Nayef Ageurd’s injury really did not help matters during pre-season with the focus having to be shifted back to centre-half after they thought that issue had been dealt with once and for all by the Moroccan.
But even then, this West Ham squad should be in the top half as an absolute minimum and probably challenging the likes of Chelsea and Liverpool for the European places right now and David Moyes has a lot of work to do to turn it around after Christmas.