Sign up to FREE email alerts from Football London - West Ham Subscribe Thank you for subscribing See our privacy notice Invalid Email

"There is great anticipation and excitement about what lies in store for next season, and everyone is looking forward to the challenge of further improving our Premier League position."

But, we're not going to stump up the cash for you to do it, Manuel.

West Ham's co-chairmen David Sullivan and David Gold have lofty ambitions for next season. While they have spoken about "improving" on this season's tenth place finish in the Premier League, you can bet what they really want is for the manager to deliver European football for the 2020/21 season.

Before any rival fans get carried away, we're quite clearly talking about the Europa League qualifying rounds here and not the Champions League - West Ham won't be finishing in the top four next season.

The Chilean manager is expected to finish at least seventh in the table next season, then. Wolves, who occupied that spot in 2018/19 have just spent the best part of £30m to secure striker Raul Jimenez's signature after a hugely successful loan spell last season.

What Wolves have spent on one player is what Pellegrini's entire budget will be this summer unless he shifts players on, which he will do, but therein lies the case in point that the two David's are ramping up the pressure on the manager already.

(Image: West Ham United FC/West Ham United via Getty Images)

Pellegrini is expected to bring European football back to east London by thinning his squad out this summer and re-investing but he can't have as much money in the first place to do it. Talk about being stuck between a rock and a hard place.

The Hammers boss wants Salomon Rondon as a new signing and he will cost half his initial budget at £16.5m. Aleksandar Mitrovic is another and he will cost more than Rondon so the best part - if not all - of the initial £30m is gone.

West Ham's biggest assets - Declan Rice, Felipe Anderson and Marko Arnautovic - aren't going anywhere this summer. If the club were going to part ways with Arnautovic and could have got £30m for him by himself, then we wouldn't be having this conversation.

As it is, those likely to go are Pedro Obiang, Lucas Perez and Javier Hernandez and only the Mexican striker could fetch anywhere near £10m and that's at a push. The Hammers will do well to recoup their £4m outlay on Perez from Arsenal last summer and Obiang is probably valued at around £6m.

This is where the two David's business model at West Ham, while admirable, is going to fall flat. The two owners are worth more than £1.8bn between them but they have not injected a penny of their own cash into the club since 2013.

They want West Ham to stand on its own two feet and took a huge chunk of the money out of the club to splash out on the £89.5m transfer spree last summer. There is nothing wrong with that but the teams above the Hammers have wealthy backers injecting their own money into the club. Look at Wolves, Leicester and Everton, for example.

On the pitch, the Hammers finished in tenth spot in the Premier League, which represents a decent return considering the manager had to deal with a number of long-term injuries throughout the season. Andriy Yarmolenko will be back next season, Manuel Lanzini will have had a full pre-season behind him, hopefully Jack Wilshere can stay fit for longer periods too. Progress, on the pitch, is certainly evident with Pellegrini at the helm.

(Image: West Ham United FC/Getty Images)

That said, the pressure is well and truly on Pellegrini to not only deliver on the co-owner's target for next season but first of all, he has to deliver in the transfer window and he's already got one hand tied behind his back before it's even got going properly.

Keep up to date with the latest news, features and exclusives from football.london via the free football.london app for iPhone and Android .

Available to download from the App Store and Google Play .