Despite Kyle Macauley being bought out of his Chelsea contract for around a million pounds, and the supposed data-led player recruitment, transfers at West Ham are a shambles. We have seen the Kudus debacle, where Sullivan hawked him around all and sundry since January, saying he would ‘only sell for £65 million, minimum’, only to bend over for Daniel Levy and sell him for £55 million, some £30 million under his release clause. We have seen the ‘sell to buy mantra’ rolled out repeatedly, and we have seen only two first team players as yet signed: Kyle Walker Peters and El Hadji Mallick Diouf. There is still time to sign more, and a lot of business is often done at the end of the window, but the signs aren’t good.
The Steidten Experiment: A Brief History
Among many things we are missing, is a ‘closer’, someone who can bond with a player, their agents, their families, someone who can get in a private jet and ‘bring them home’. Someone, like Tim Steidten. Tim arrived at West Ham in July 2023, as David Sullivan again experimented with handing the transfer reigns over to someone else. Fans were excited, as Steidten quickly oversaw the signings of Mohammed Kudus and Edson Alvarez. In total 15 players were signed in the time Steidten was at the club:
- Mohammed Kudus
- Edson Alvarez
- James Ward-Prowse (Manager Pick)
- Konstantinos Mavropanos
- Andy Irving
- Max Kilman (Manager Pick)
- Crysencio Summerville
- Niclas Fullkrug
- Luis Guilherme
- Aaron Wan-Bissaka
- Guido Rodriguez
- Wes Foderingham
- Jean-Clair Todibo
- Carlos Soler
- Kalvin Phillips
Without going into too much detail about these signings, a few things are worth pointing out. Fullkrug, who was often used as a stick to beat Steidten with, was signed because Sullivan wouldn’t pay for Steidten’s first choice striker Jhon Duran, and Sullivan made sure that the fee we paid for Fullkrug was massively over inflated in the press. Kudus, we have just turned a profit on, and Alvarez may be sold at a decent mark-up following his international success in the summer. So, all in all, not as disastrous as Mr Sullivan would have you believe. It’s almost as if Steidten knew what he was doing, and given time and backing would have completed the five-year project he started.
“Night and Day”: Structure vs. Emotion
It wasn’t a surprise to anyone when Steidten’s tenure ended badly, as Sullivan could not resist meddling, and neither Moyes nor Lopetegui gelled with the German. As is the norm with Sullivan, there was no real structure, it was utterly muddled. Steidten said he needed five-years to get the right squad assembled at West Ham; he lasted just 18 months. In a recent interview with Sky Sports Germany, Steidten was asked to compare his experiences at West Ham and former club Bayer Leverkusen:
‘It’s a difference like night and day. In Germany, clubs are clearly structured. In England, on the other hand, many clubs are run by owners. The owner not only brings in his money but is also very emotionally involved.’
The German was binned off, and Macauley brought in, but the key point was that there would be no Director of Football, Sullivan would go back to overseeing transfers. The fanbase gave a collective groan, and hunkered down, ready for another window of phantom bids, near misses and the old ‘we tried’ narrative, and so far this summer that has indeed been the case.
The Egan-Riley Miss: A Call to Mum
An example (there are many) of Sullivan not being up to the job, is the attempts to sign CJ Egan-Riley. He had been scouted by Potter’s team for some time, was available on a free transfer, and looked to be an ideal early summer signing. Alas, no – the 22-year-old joined Olympique Marseille, on a four-year deal. Marseille can offer Champions League football, and Egan-Riley may have wanted a chance to ply his trade in a different country. That said, you can’t help but feel someone with a bit of nous would have been able to put an arm around him, sell him the vision of a rebuild under Potter, use the pull of London, of playing in front of 60-odd thousand fans, charmed his family, his agent. Instead, we had Sullivan making a last-minute call to the player’s mum, which was literally followed by the player signing for Marseille. We will never know if having a professional Director of Football would have made any difference, but Sullivan is notoriously bad at interacting with players and different football clubs. Who can ever forget the Sporting Lisbon chairman calling Sullivan and Gold ‘The Dildo Brothers’?
The Muddled Future
Tim Steidten’s tenure at West Ham split the fanbase, with the heavily pro-Moyes camp seeing him as back-stabbing chancer, only out for himself. As much as it is clear the man enjoyed the limelight and was not everyone’s cup of tea – he got the job done. Had he been allowed to work in tandem with Potter and Macauley, and been given proper funds, I am sure this window would have seen more success. As it is we are all cringing at Sullivan’s antics, and feeling sorry for the latest in a long line of managers.
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