Select your timezone: Select

West Ham Team Preview

West Ham


West Ham are coming into this season after making some really good additions to the squad and their fans will be hoping that they can finally adapt to playing in the Olympic Stadium and actually perform on the pitch. In the past two seasons, we all said that West Ham look dangerous, but they never really showed that on the pitch regardless of the signings which is why we’re a little sceptical this year. If you look at the names they signed, sure these are some really good players in Jack Wilshere, Felipe Anderson, Carlos Sanchez etc. West Ham have really strengthened their attack they have lots of creativity and realistically, attack was never the problem with this team but more signings to improve it doesn’t hurt. With Lanzini out for possibly the whole season, they signed Lazio’s Felipe Anderson who is a very good player, Yarmolenko was also signed (another very good attacking player) and then the addition of Lucas Perez should give Chicarito competition for the starting places. Keeping Arnautovic was really important for the Hammers as he was the standout player for them last season and has looked really sharp in pre-season. In terms of defence, West Ham were leaky again last season and they haven’t really made many significant signings concerning that. They added a full back Ryan Fredericks, the addition of a CDM Carlos Sanchez could prove crucial for the Hammers, a very good CDM who will be the replacement for Kouyate who was sold to Palace and he will make a very good partnership with Jack Wilshere who is coming off of a very good season with Arsenal and who was weirdly not signed to a new contract. Wilshere is going to be very good for this team. Lukasz Fabianski was another well known player who West Ham signed, but he’s there to give competition to Adrian as Joe Hart is gone.


Overall, it looks like West Ham are going to be an exciting squad going forward, they have a lot of creativity and good goal scorers and we could see them score lots of goals but at the back we can expect problems to continue to occur as they haven’t strengthened that much. West Ham games should have goals and as for betting, going for overs is going to be a good bet for the most part of the West Ham season. In terms of objective, they can definitely compete for the 7th spot on paper, but the recent failures should not get West Ham fans hopes up too much so until we see anything special we’ll put their objective as mid table finish. We just have to wait and see how this team clicks under Manuel Pellegrini who by the way was another key addition as he’s a very good manager former BPL winner with Man City 4 years ago and he definitely is the best manager the Hammers had over the recent years so he may actually be able to steady the ship.


Transfers


In – Ryan Fredericks, Issa Diop, Lukasz Fabianski, Jack Wilshere, Andriy Yarmolenko, Fabian Balbuena, Felipe Anderson, Xande Silva, Lucas Perez, Carlos Sanchez


Out – James Collins, Patrice Evra, Ben Wells, Reece Burke, Marcus Browne(Loan), Cheikhou Kouyate, Sead Haksabanovic(Loan), Jordan Hugill(Loan), Domingos Quina


Expecations and Results


Last Year’s Finish – 13th


Target for 2018-19 – Finish Mid Table


Key Players – Marko Arnautovic, Adrian, Jack Wilshere, Angelo Ogbonna, Felipe Anderson, Chicharito


Manager – Manuel Pellegrini

More about Previews