Written by Jim Kearns – @TheHList

West Ham are a club tied to the Premier League equator like a ship to a jetty. Sometimes they bob north and sometimes they drift south but if ever you need to find West Ham on the Premier League map, place your finger on tenth place and search in ever widening circles. You generally won’t need to venture far.

What Went Before

Last year was a classic of the genre. Manuel Pellegrini arrived in a blaze of positive publicity, as well he might for his reputed £8m a year salary. Alongside him came some unusually forward-thinking signings – Issa Diop and Felipe Anderson – young and expensive and the kind of players who might actually hold their value if they performed well. This was a brave, weird, new world.

More customarily, they were joined by the usual roll call of ageing, expensive or injury prone sorts. Andriy Yarmolenko, Carlos Sanchez, Lucas Perez and Jack Wilshere were all on the crap side of useless, and only the magnificent Lukasz Fabiański proved a worthwhile addition from the annual David Sullivan splurge on players-that-nobody-else-would-consider-spending-so-much-on. Ryan Fredericks and Fabian Balbuena looked decent but both missed more games with injury than they played, as is the West Ham Way™.

Things began rather ‘Bilić-ly’, as the club lost their opening four games and were bottom by mid-September. Thereafter followed a recovery of such strength that by Christmas, Pellegrini had the side into the top half and even contemplating an assault on the top 7. This proved impossible however, as every time the team hauled themselves within spitting distance of that Promised Land they contrived to stumble, including a 2-0 defeat at Cardiff that may well have been the worst performance by a Premier League team all season. And yes, I am aware of the existence of Fulham.

Part of the problem was linked to the number of injuries suffered by first-teamers, as the club once more suffered their Annual! Unprecedented! Injury! Crisis! (That Happens Every Year). When David Sullivan begins paying attention to injury records and allows his players to train at a facility even slightly better than a prison, West Ham may well be a dangerous team.

However, along with the aforementioned Yarmolenko, Fredericks, Balbuena, Wilshere and Sanchez injuries, there were also long spells on the sidelines for Manuel Lanzini, Pedro Obiang and – shockingly – Andy Carroll. All of which led to the January signing of Samir Nasri who, and you’ll be stunned at this, made just five appearances in an injury plagued stay.

Alongside this entirely unpredictable spate of injuries that happens every season, we also had the not entirely unprecedented sight of a high profile player downing tools in January in search of a move away from the London Stadium. Where Dimitri Payet once forged ahead, he was now followed by Marko Arnatouvić who was desperate to fulfil his childhood ambition to play in (checks notes)…Shanghai! West Ham sensibly staved this off by giving him a contract extension and an increased wage packet, and then sold him in the summer for less than they were offered in January. I’m beginning to wonder if owning pornographic magazines isn’t a cast iron guarantee that a person will be a super savvy football club owner.

Much of the credit for the customary tenth place finish must therefore go to previously unheralded types like Declan Rice and Robert Snodgrass, who emerged to become vital elements in the Pellegrini midfield, alongside the West Ham redwood tree that is Mark Noble. How vital he continues to be. So too Anderson and Diop, who blew hot and cold but justified their purchases, alongside the tremendous Fabiański, who kept just 7 clean sheets all season (third fewest in the division by club) but still made the most saves in the division. Either West Ham will play an actual defence in 2019/20 or Fabiański is going to continue to be the most overworked man in the Western World.

At this point we should perhaps note that West Ham have not signed any new defenders and are apparently relying on everybody being fit for the whole season, which is a perfectly sensible plan that has never failed them in the past.

What Happens Next?

This pre-season has been marked by yet another a pair of thoroughly un-West Ham signings. First came highly touted Spanish midfielder Pablo Fornals and then the powerful French striker, Sébastien Haller. Leaving aside the anticipation of the many and varied ways in which the latter will have his surname pronounced in East London, this is uncharted territory for West Ham.

July-era Sullivanism is generally marked by a wild panic spree as nine players leave, all for a loss, and are replaced by seven more, randomly selected from a set of 2012 Match Attax cards. If Pellegrini has had any success it has been to convince the chairman to purchase younger, fitter, faster players who he might one day be able to sell for a profit. It goes completely against the grain.

And so one of Europe’s most highly-rated young strikers arrives to replace the aforementioned Arnautović – last spotted in a January hostage video saying how excited he was to be staying. This is the great gamble of the Pellegrini era as Sullivan hates players who have yet to play in the Premier League, but the Frenchman seems an obvious upgrade.

Behind him will be a phalanx of exciting but mercurial attacking midfielders. Anderson was inconsistent if productive in his first season (9 goals, 4 assists, xG 5.53, xA 6.78), and will be joined by the returning Lanzini and Yarmolenko. Somewhere in there will also fit Michail Antonio, who finished the season strongly, and Javier Hernandez, who did not.

The wild card is Fornals (2 goals, 3 assists, xG 3.92, xA 5.41), an excellent young player who may be deployed at the tip of a diamond in a standard Pellegrini 4-4-2 or possibly in a wider role, where his willingness to do some defending might push him in front of his peers. He is, perhaps surprisingly, comparable with Robert Snodgrass (whose place he is likely to take) in terms of creativity, although we ought to acknowledge he spent last season in a mediocre Villareal side.

Expect West Ham to finish within touching distance of that famous tenth place, although if you’re looking for a side to come down with the Christmas decorations then it should be noted that their post-Christmas away schedule is brutal.

The keyhole surgery of this summer has been better than the emergency operations that are usually required, but this is still a club making up for years of horrible transfers. If Haller and Fornals hit big, and the defence holds together then they might make a run for eighth, but it’s more likely that they serve up some fun games at home and get absolutely battered on the road, where the lack of defensive stability will continue to haunt them.

Expect a a 4-5-1, or some variant thereof, from Pellegrini and an overreliance on individual excellence rather than any specific commitment to a tactical or technical plan to overwhelm opponents. I do rather wish that the defensive plan was something a bit firmer than “Don’t worry about it, leave it to Declan”, but it seems to be what we’re going with. Mystifyingly, they seem unlikely to purchase a genuine two-way central midfielder and will try and wring another season out of the ageing Noble.

West Ham will be fine, but will probably be a long way behind their peers, with the likes of Leicester and Wolves operating with an intellectual horsepower that far outweighs that on display in the boardroom at the London Stadium. Expect another of the endless transition years that are the hallmark of the Sullivan era.

Radars courtesy of www.understat.com