What I should have said was, why West Ham United do not need to buy OR sell in the January transfer window.
What I do think, is this. We should be planning the summer signings and not worrying about what we already have. Let’s look at the evidence for not buying.,,
Who do you buy of any quality in the winter window? You can argue that there have been some very good signings in the past, but I don’t know of many of those coming to Upton Park. They’ve been last ditch journeymen hoping to resurrect an already defunct career.
Demba Ba stands out for me as an exception, but look back over the winter signings and you won’t find any long term signings or quality.
Roger Johnson, Nene, Wellington (yes exactly, who?) two Italians that hardly ever played, and the list goes on. Why did we buy them? Usually to get us out of the relegation scrap or to help the squad improve, as was the case last year.
However, fourth at Christmas and only three wins in the second half of the season would suggest a definite lack of improvement to be honest.
Equally, any player of note will be playing at the highest level and probably still playing in a European competition. So, are they going to want to move? No, of course not. I do smile when I hear that Sunderland and Villa want this player and that player. They may well want them, but will the player want to go to a club threatened with relegation and subsequently out of the limelight of the Premier League?
I see no reason to go on a spending spree now. I see the reports of Zarate and possibly Carroll moving on. Zarate may happen and could free up some cash to cut back on wages, but I’m not so sure Carroll will go anywhere other than Newcastle and then the question remains as to whether Newcastle will splash the required cash.
With the Magpies spending around £40m in the summer and still in the bottom three, will Mike Ashley trust Steve McClaren. However, then you have to remember that this is the all important season for every Premier League club and aspiring Championship team.
The money from the TV deal next season will increase by about 70%. The overall cost of the three year TV Rights deal is roughly £5.136bn. That’s £10.19m per game. With money from the domestic rights deal, the 20 clubs get 50% divided equally with 25% merit money paid, depending on their final league position.
There are further fess involved as well, so you can see why clubs spent big last summer and those in peril might spend again in January. The Premier League will be the place to be for revenue.
Then I look at West Ham. Currently sixth, a very good first half of the season with notable scalps under our belts and a double over Liverpool. With the same players, we can maintain this position and a push for a Europa League place without the need for acquisitions.
Matt Jarvis has gone now and even if we sold the likes of Joey O’Brien, we still have enough depth and quality to withstand the need for new faces. New players coming into a dressing room devoid of confidence will do that club the power of good, but I honestly think we don’t need that. The turnaround in attitude and the feel good factor brought in by Slaven Bilic seems to have set us up for a decent run up to May.
We need to think about what happens when Victor Moses and Carl Jenkinson go back to their parent clubs. We need to have eyes on certain players to cover those positions in the knowledge that we are still a Premier League team and one that is heralding in a new era.
If you think about it, even when we had a list as long as your arm of injuries (and we still have one or two to come back after the weekend) we still held our own. What Bilic did with the lack of creativity was to make us difficult to beat. This same set of players can hold their own in this league even without star players and, therefore, I just don’t think we need anyone else right now. The following quote is a bit like buying a player, and then it doesn’t work out…
“Marrying a man is like buying something you’ve been admiring for a long time in a shop window. You may love it when you get it home, but it doesn’t always go with everything else in the house” – Jean Kerr
In all probability, there will be one or maybe two new faces, but as the Chairmen have said, we would need to sell first. Fair play rules determine how far we can spend. As it stands, let’s wait until the summer and go for who we really want to see in the claret and blue.
The January transfer window? Not for us, thanks.
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