West Ham’s arc from European trophy winners to a rudderless relegation side happened even faster than Tim Steidten’s 18-month tenure. In fact, one could say that Steidten’s time at the club was analogous to our failed attempt to become serious contenders in the modern footballing world. It was a brief hope and a try at something grander than we were, only to meet with a classic West Ham bubble bursting.
The Friction of Implementation
Appointing our first “Technical Director” was a deliberate step toward the modernised game, where a technician’s ethos often supersedes the classic manager role. This shift leaves the manager to act as a coach or “man-manager,” serving as an in-game tactician to the Technical Director’s overall strategy. This was a significant step up from West Ham’s brief dabbling with the idea during Rob Newman’s passage as head of recruitment and signified a real attempt at becoming a top-six team.
I would argue that Sullivan and Brady were right to bring this position to the club to advance a new era, but I’d chant from the terraces that their implementation was anything but successful. You simply cannot have a successful plan with a Technical Director if David Sullivan is still making player picks based on frugality, curiosity, or relationships with agents.
A Clash of Philosophies
Additionally, you cannot have an “old school” manager like David Moyes, whose specific demands on player profile inevitably clash with a director who does not share his vision. Moyes’ success and failure rides on his implementation of discipline, defensive structure, and counter-attacking football with players who prefer graft and physicality.
Steidten, Sullivan, and Moyes were a worse team matchup than the players on the pitch. Steidten functioned in German operational modernism – with less emphasis on identity or tactics and more on transactional systems based on market efficiency. Sullivan, with his furs and nouveau-riche style of ownership, uses high-profile players to exaggerate his wealth and community standing. Meanwhile, Moyes remained manager-centred, believing success is led by discipline and tight interactions with players under his sole authority.
If you aggregated these three into a team, it would be as if Sullivan were the flash player waiting to score a bicycle kick without working the ball forward. Steidten would be the midfielder analysing the perfect pass in a system not yet created, and Moyes would be the defender refusing to let the ball go until he had carried it 50 yards up the field.
The Leverkusen Myth
There is also reason to believe that Bayer Leverkusen’s undefeated success was not actually at the hands of Steidten, but rather Simon Rolfes. Rolfes was the true wunderkind in terms of scouting and long-term vision, serving as the Sporting Director over Steidten. Leverkusen’s CEO was equally influential, serving as the real architect of the data department and the financial model that existed long before Steidten’s arrival.
Why speak of Steidten when he is now almost as far from us as Moyes? After three post-Moyes managers, we have yet to see a squad with a real identity. With the recent departures of Luis Guilherme and Andy Irving – some of the last of the “talent development” era – we might hope for a team that borrows more from the academy than unknowns from the outside.
The Steidten Roster: Hits and Misses
Steidten’s roster included: Kudus, Alvarez, Ward-Prowse, Guilherme, Fullkrug, Rodriguez, Summerville, Wan-Bissaka, Fernandes, Irving, Foderingham, Todibo, Kante, Mavropanos, and Soler. It is hard to imagine Sullivan paid for that many players over the course of 18 months. Of these players, Summerville, Wan-Bissaka, Fernandes, Mavropanos, and Todibo remain, while Fullkrug, Alvarez, and Ward-Prowse are on loan and all but sold.
While a brief glance over these players doesn’t reveal anything damning, they still fall under the “West Ham third rule”: one-third excellent, one-third mediocre, and one-third abysmal. Take the recent departure of Andy Irving – a fan favourite, though I don’t remember actually watching him play. We liked him because he was Scottish, drove a Nissan Juke, and seemed like a normal guy.
However, his purchase was based on a “buy-to-build-to-sell” model that resulted in a £200,000 loss rather than an amortisation profit. Even worse was the loss on Luis Guilherme, who was barely featured under Lopetegui, Potter, or Nuno, resulting in a £10 million deficit overall. Just like Irving and Guilherme, there is a list of unremarkable players who are already on loan, off the books, or never featured, including Soler, Kante, and Foderingham.
Returning to Our Roots
One would have thought we would do better to cling to our roots and use the West Ham Academy to evolve players with far more sentiment and far less financial loss. We are already seeing a boost from involving academy graduates like Scarles, Potts, and Marshall; it boosts morale to see our own out there.
In the end, Steidten left us with some decent players: Kudus and Alvarez were both decent; Todibo and Summerville are shaping up and we still have more to see from Fernandes. But with mediocre players like Mavropanos and Kilman and flops like Fullkrug and Rodriguez, one wonders what he actually produced that Sullivan and Brady couldn’t.
A Vision for the Future
Perhaps in a club as chaotic as West Ham, we should not reach for a technocratic German model, but rather reach back into our own roots for a solution. We should be bold enough to lean into a visionary-culture model, similar to the Athletic Club Bilbao approach where the emphasis on local culture is the source of strength. Could we bring it back to players from the East End and push the Academy to full prominence?
If that feels too nationalistic, we should at least look at Jurgen Klopp’s revival of Liverpool through collective responsibility and emotional authenticity. West Ham fans would respond more to a renewed sense of cultural identity as the scrappy underdogs over systematic conquering. Whatever we do, we should pursue an ethos that fits our system and stop wasting time on directors who do not belong.
If we don’t survive this relegation battle, perhaps a cultural reset is exactly what we need. We should lean into our identity rather than wearing a mask of modernism that only covers a corporate cash grab. After all, we’re the Hammers – a people born out of labouring dock workers, fighting for our pie and mash, and giving hell to any club that tells us we’re not worthy.
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