West Ham are 14th in the Premier League and in dire straits, but they are hoping that the end of the Julen Lopetegui disaster and the arrival of former Brighton manager Graham Potter will help them right the ship.
After a summer of significant transfer investment that included the likes of Guido Rodriguez, Aaron Wan-Bissaka, Carlos Soler, Crysencio Summerville, and Niclas Fullkrug, West Ham, in all likelihood, will have to prepare for more notable moves this winter in order to appease the incoming Potter.
While Potter comes with a track record of elevating a club in the Premier League, he also had a pretty poor spell at Chelsea that led to his early dismissal, even if he did end up being a fair bit better than the man who immediately replaced him, Mauricio Pochettino.
Potter’s every move will be scrutinized heavily, and, according to a report from Metro, his first transfer target for West Ham this winter is Chelsea midfielder Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall.
A backup player at Chelsea, Dewsbury-Hall has predictably failed to impress at the Blues after Enzo Maresca brought him over from Leicester City as a new manager due to his familiarity with his system.
Even with that advantage, Dewsbury-Hall has been discarded on the grounds of not being nearly good enough for the Chelsea starting midfield, and it’s fair to wonder, especially at the price point of a Chelsea player, if he’s even a starting-caliber player for West Ham.
On some level, it would make sense for Potter to sign a former player of his as an early move, but, in this case, there’s no familiarity factor. Dewsbury-Hall and Potter never worked together at Chelsea, and, well, Potter barely even spent any time at Chelsea anyway, so any reasoning about overarching philosophy would be totally moot as well.
West Ham have to start getting more selective about their transfer targets rather than being open to some of the whims of their managers or executives, and a lack of a team-oriented, collaborative process likely led to some of the already failed summer 2024 signings, such as Fullkrug.
