2024/25 Premier League Preview - West Ham United

West Ham are moving into a totally new era after long time manager David Moyes left the club. Moyes was the longest serving manager for the Hammers since Harry Redknapp left in 2001. His 2nd stint with West Ham saw them achieve some of their highest league finishes in recent years and had them compete in Europe in 3 straight seasons, where their 43 year wait for a major trophy came to an end.

Last season didn’t particularly go to plan after finishing 9th in the Premier League and being dumped out of the Europa League quarter finals by the near immortal Bayer Leverkusen. Their lack of natural strikers and inconsistent defence really hurt them and was a big reason why they didn’t end up finishing in a better spot in the league after a promising start. England winger Jarrod Bowen was their top scorer with 16 league goals and nobody else managed net any more than half of that amount. This all led to David Moyes leaving the club at the end of the season and West Ham appointing former Wolves, Real Madrid and Spain manager, Julen Lopetegui.

Lopetegui will bring a completely different style of play to what Moyes did. Moyes came in for heavy criticism from fans a lot of the time with his style of play being described as negative and not in fitting with the club’s players and aims. Lopetegui will bring a heavily possession based set of tactics to the Hammers and fans will be hoping to see this kick into gear immediately following a season that saw them average only 41.1% possession. The addition of this new focus has also been buoyed by a massive drive in recruitment, spearheaded by Technical Director, Tim Steidten.

Every positional need has been addressed and more for the Irons. The window began rather slowly for the first few weeks where links to various players emerged but nothing looked to be progressing, with the only signing early in the window being Brazilian youngster Luis Guilherme, and it looked that after a few knockbacks that they’d struggle for the signings that they desperately needed.

All of a sudden, £120m later, people are now claiming West Ham have “won the transfer window” after a string of quality signings. Max Kilman, Niclas Füllkrug, Crysencio Summerville, Guido Rodríguez and Jean-Clair Todibo are all now West Ham players and it wouldn’t be surprising to see all of these players get good minutes in the squad, especially Kilman and Todibo who are expected to partner each other in the heart of their defence now that Kurt Zouma has moved on and concerns still exist with Nayef Aguerd and Konstantinos Mavropanos. Todibo was the subject of interest from some huge teams in Europe with Manchester United having bids rejected over the last year and Juventus who almost looked nailed on to sign him before the Hammers hijacked his move. A clever move for West Ham financially is that the £40m fee that’s been agreed for Todibo will not be paid until next year as the player has joined on loan with an obligation to buy at the end of the season. This freed up more money for them to pursue Aaron Wan-Bissaka who is their latest signing, who will likely slot straight into right back after concerning performances of late from Vladimír Coufal.

An obvious dark cloud looming over the London Stadium right now is one that concerns midfielder Lucas Paquetá who awaits a verdict on a potential ban after being charged by the FA for breaching betting regulations. The Brazilian international was subject to transfer interest from Manchester City before the end of the season and it looked likely that City would pay up and meet his £85m release clause. But the interest has now understandably faded away with the possibility of a lifetime ban being discussed. The positive for West Ham surrounding this situation is that it appears that any decision will not come until later on next year and Lopetegui will plan on him being a major part of West Ham’s upcoming season.

With all issues being directly addressed by clever recruitment, it may still take West Ham time to get the best out of their new look team. Many of their new players have never played in the Premier League, despite how highly rated they are. On top of this, the existing players will need to adapt well to Lopetegui’s tactics after playing under a polar opposite manager for so many years.

Overall, the future looks really promising for the Hammers when at one point there were real question marks surrounding whether they’d be seen in Europe again. A season out of Europe will probably do them a favour so that they can focus on securing a solid position in the league after strengthening and lowering their squad’s average age at the same time. The moves they’ve made are very similar to that of Aston Villa who invested heavily in their squad and employed a Spanish, possession based manager and ended up in the Champions League. Of course that would be a more than successful season to end up there but this is probably the strongest and most competitive the Premier League has ever been and a position lower than that is a more likely outcome.

League prediction: 9th

Squad grade: B+

Manager grade: B