Making sense of Niclas Fullkrug’s sudden transfer to West Ham

West Ham made headlines in the Premier League by signing a new No. 9 this summer, pivoting quickly from the increasingly frustrating pursuit of Aston Villa striker prospect Jhon Duran to inking AC Milan target Niclas Fullkrug of Borussia Dortmund (and Werder Bremen) fame.

The German international is coming to London at a 27 million euro fee, joining a long list of well-known strikers around European football to make a big-money move to West Ham just when they were starting to get some hype.

Let’s take a closer look at Fullkrug as a player and make sense of why the Hammers are signing a player past the age of 30 who has never scored 20 goals in a Bundesliga season.

Why he left Dortmund

Niclas Fullkrug only spent one season at Borussia Dortmund after Edin Terzic advocated to sign the former Werder Bremen star when he already had two legitimate striker options in top prospect Youssoufa Moukoko and former Ajax blockbuster signing Sebastien Haller.

Terzic and Dortmund signed Fullkrug instead of a center back, frustrating many fans who viewed defensive reinforcements as a bigger priority. In the end, Terzic may have been vindicated by the success of his starting center back pairing and Fullkrug’s importance in making it to the Champions League Final, yet, Dortmund were so far behind Bayer Leverkusen, VfB Stuttgart, and Bayern Munich in the Bundesliga title race that the season seemed like a failure anyway.

And Dortmund managed to alienate Fullkrug himself this subsequent offseason by signing another shiny new toy at striker, Stuttgart’s breakout superstar Serhou Guirassy.

Fullkrug was the best striker in the Bundesliga for the 2022/23 season with Robert Lewandowski gone to Barcelona, but in 2023/24, that honor very clearly belonged to Guirassy and his whopping 28 goals for Die Schwaben.

Seeing how Dortmund signed a striker who was more successful than Fullkrug, the German international saw the writing on the wall and was open to a split from the club, likely knowing deep down that Dortmund were prepared to displace him with Guirassy in and Terzic out (replaced by club icon Nuri Sahin at manager).

AC Milan were the first club linked to Fullkrug as a secondary option to Alvaro Morata, but their interest quickly waned. Meanwhile, after being rebuffed several times by increasingly nonsensical transfer demands from Aston Villa for Jhon Duran, West Ham began to show interest in Fullkrug as an alternative to the 20-year-old Colombian.

Talks accelerated, and Fullkrug went from speculated smokescreen to get Villa to cave on their Duran demands to the next No. 9 at West Ham, joining an attack that includes a trio of legitimate Premier League stars in Lucas Paqueta, Mohammed Kudus, and Jarrod Bowen.

West Ham’s need for Fullkrug’s profile

West Ham whiffed on two very talented strikers from around Europe in current Dortmund flop Sebastien Haller, as well as current Atalanta star Gianluca Scamacca. So the Hammers have been looking for a world-class, big No. 9 who can bag 20 goals in season for years.

Jhon Duran looked like a high-risk, high-reward play for the long haul, but the Hammers pulled out of negotiations because the weight of the risk burden had grown too high with each time Aston Villa dug their heels deeper into the ground on their 40 million pound-plus valuation of the striker.

So West Ham decided to go a little old school with a 6’2″, 31-year-old striker who looks like he eats nails for breakfast with a side of bricks lathered in motor oil. They made a short-term play for a veteran No. 9 who had one good season for Hannover in 2017/18 with 14 goals but was off the radar until returning to the Bundesliga with Werder Bremen in 2022/23 as the literal best German striker.

But really, West Ham always wanted a guy like Fullkrug. He is no-nonsense and has thrived in multiple environments – the German national team at the Euros, Dortmund in the Champions League knockouts, and Hannover and Werder in the thick of relegation fights or promotional battles.

Fullkrug is a seasoned veteran who can flirt with 20 goals in a top-flight season but is also coming off a career year in the assists department with 8 for Dortmund, molding himself into an all-arounder.

West Ham have a talented, fluid attack with Paqueta, Kudus, and Bowen all capable of creating their own shots. So a strong anchoring point with aerial threat who can serve as a target man and a reference point for the rest of the attack, in view of the assist numbers he put up last season, was exactly the kind of striker West Ham had in mind to begin with.

Fullkrug’s strengths

Niclas Fullkrug is at his best when he gets to work with other talented attackers who are different to him and have more of a finesse game. That may seem like the obvious takeaway from a player coming off a strong season with Dortmund, but Fullkrug’s best work was honestly before arriving at Germany’s second-biggest club.

See, Fullkrug formed one of the best attacking partnerships in all of European football during the 2022/23 season with Marvin Ducksch, one of a few former Dortmund academy stars who got away from the Black and Yellow club.

Ducksch was more of the support striker, while Fullkrug was the anchor. That season, Fullkrug had 16 goals and 5 assists to set his career high for goal contributions, while Ducksch had 12 goals and 6 assists, creating more chances of the two.

Fullkrug does a lot more than just score goals or play like a big No. 9. He can be light on his feet, as he had 1.1 dribbles completed and 1.7 fouls drawn per game in the 2022/23 season with Bremen.

Meanwhile, Fullkrug only averaged 0.2 dribbles per game for Dortmund but still had well over a key pass per match and a foul drawn per contest, upping his assists to 11 between the Champions League and Bundesliga.

Basically, Fullkrug has proven he is capable of doing it all at striker, but, first and foremost, he is a guy who like to focus on goals and is more than capable of making things happen on his own while playing nicely with other, more dynamic forwards.

Which players benefit the most

As such, the entire West Ham attack is going to benefit from working with Fullkrug, whether it is Jarrod Bowen coming off the right, Lucas Paqueta on the left, Mohammed Kudus literally anywhere, or Bowen or Michail Antonio in a striker partnership.

Fullkrug can be a great target for a dynamic winger’s crosses, or he can clear space for that winger to shoot by using his frame to draw defenders out, shield them before laying it off to the winger, or producing a one-two.

He is underrated technically, which he showed both at Bremen and at Dortmund, where you really have to be on your toes as a striker to succeed – look at how badly Haller has gone on there because he hasn’t been able to interplay as adeptly.

James Ward-Prowse, in particular, will enjoy playing with Fullkrug, because the big German No. 9’s box presence and aerial ability lend themselves nicely to helping JWP rack up his assists after leading the team with 7 last season,

To that end, Paqueta is another potentially world-class playmaker for West Ham who could, in theory, double his assists to 12 with a better overall attack that includes Fullkrug’s presence and Kudus breaking out more next season.

Kudus and Bowen themselves had six assists each. At West Ham, there isn’t just one guy in the attack. There are a handful of quality footballers chipping in, so having an anchoring point at the 9 like Fullkrug can help bring up everyone else’s numbers by giving defenses one big, bad striker who soaks up their attention and man power.

The biggest problem with Fullkrug

There are a lot of benefits Fullkrug brings to the table as a goal-scorer, creator, and box presence, but West Ham are taking a different kind of risk with Fullkrug as compared to Jhon Duran.

For starters, while Fullkrug is significantly cheaper than the Aston Villa prospect, it’s not like the German international is necessarily cheap either. A 27 million euro transfer fee is quite grand for a 31-year-old striker who was not really close to the best in the Bundesliga and had already went for 17 million euros in the previous summer, scoring fewer goals in 2023/24 on a better team.

That’s not to say Fullkrug failed to impress at Dortmund, but you could argue that there is a reason why BVB decided to sign Serhou Guirassy instead of staying put at the position; they didn’t view Fullkrug as a world-class striker who could help them compete with Bayer Leverkusen’s Victor Boniface or Bayern Munich’s Harry Kane at the top of the league table.

Fullkrug is good but not world-class. He is going for the financial rate of that caliber of a striker, except when you factor in his age, you realize that West Ham are overpaying on market value, since Fullkrug has no resale value and saw his price go up by 10 million euros for no reason other than increased name recognition at the Euros and in the Champions League.

West Ham were bit in the past by signing big-name, hyped strikers like Haller and Scamacca for big fees, but those guys were younger and, in the case of Haller, coming off better seasons (Eintracht Frankfurt in 2018/19).

Fullkrug is a strong, short-term ploy for West Ham, but he doesn’t solve their striker problem for more than a couple of seasons, and unless if West Ham fire past the likes of Chelsea and Newcastle into the Europa League, it’s unlikely even continuing at his current level will lead to the Hammers recouping the transfer fee they have paid, which they will never get back on the open market.

In the Premier League, clubs are often forced to focus on short-term gains instead of sacrificing the immediate future for the long-term, and despite having the potential to start a new project with a new manager in Julen Lopetegui, perhaps they are falling into that trap.

But an optimist could take a differing view. West Ham already have a great nucleus of young talent in the attack. Fullkrug is a relatively affordable, safe veteran striker with a suitable profile who makes the current talent better and can help Lopetegui and the Hammers bridge the gap for what’s to come in the future.