West Ham news on Sunday is baffling, it could end up costing David Moyes his job
There was one thing when perusing the papers on Sunday that caught my eye about West Ham.
According to the Sunday Mirror (17 December, page 74) the Hammers are ready to sell as many as seven fringe players in the January transfer window.
The report by Ryan Taylor named Said Benrahma, Thilo Kehrer, Danny Ings, Maxwel Cornet, Aaron Cresswell, Ben Johnson and Pablo Fornals as the players available in a bid to raise funds.
Now, don’t me wrong, there are absolutely no surprises there, all of those players are well out of first-team contention and struggling for game time, it would be the right thing for the club and the players to move on.
But not just yet. And the reason I say that is because, yes West Ham need to add some quality if possible, but the January transfer window is a notoriously difficult time to do business.
No team wants to lose their best players midway through a season so fees and wages end up being massively inflated, so you need to be extremely careful with any signings you do make.
What West Ham cannot afford to do is sell players they might need without being able to bring in the injection of quality they need.
Especially in the context of what is shaping up to be an extremely busy season. The Hammers managed to finish top of their Europa League group so they avoided a couple of extra games, but they still have European football to factor in.
There is still a very realistic possibility they will have a Carabao Cup semi-final to play, albeit Liverpool will start as favourites in the last-eight clash. And then there is the FA Cup to factor in too.
Basically, the upshot is that the players mentioned are likely to be needed at some point and to sell as many as seven would be a mistake when bringing in replacements is going to be extremely difficult.
If David Moyes did decide to cash in on all of them, failed to adequately replace them, lost players to injuries, saw his side struggle for form, then it could leave him in a very difficult position. Who knows, it could even cost him his job.
Okay, granted, a lot of moving parts would need to fall into place in that scenario. But it seems a much more sensible move to wait to move at least the majority of those players on in the summer window.
In other West Ham news, Moyes’ top transfer priority for January has been shared.