West Ham's Transfer Targets For This Summer ?

It's almost like back in the day when the 'Icelandics' rocked up at the Boleyn and started splashing the cash, suddenly West Ham United were being 'linked' with just about any player who had a pulse and began the tradition of the 'Kieron Dyer' society. Huge money spent and a lengthy contract for an abject and perenial 'sick note' of a player, does that ring any bells? Anyhow it later transpired that all the free flowing money was actually freely accumulating debt on a massive scale that damn near bankrupted the club and paved the way for the two David's to ride into town and 'rescue' the club, which they did, but at what cost?

Having overseen the disasterous move from the beloved Boleyn Ground to the 'souless dome' that is the London Stadium, the Hammers hierarchy were supposed to take the club to another level, and they nearly did, down to the Championship! The two season's at the London Stadium have been extremely challenging for supporters and playing staff, so the arrival of Manuel Pellegrini to take over the reins from David Moyes who himself had taken over from Slaven Billic has been greeted with cautious optimism. Having been given a massive salary and a supposedley decent fiscal warchest, the Pilgrim, as Pellegrini was once nicknamed, has been linked with a whole raft of players from all over the World and rangeing from teenagers to 'golden oldies', we shall try to sift through the information and sort out the wood from the trees.

Targets & Potential Arrivals
We are best starting off with those players available on a 'free' transfer, the word free being paradoxical because of the signing on and agent's fees usually involved can be vast, there are several high profile players available, most of them are over 30 years old or there abouts and can only be seen as short term stop gaps. Even if Pellegrini has £100 Million to spend, which is highly unlikely, he will need to do a lot of Horse trading in order to balance the books.
So, in no particular order here are some of the 'frees' that the club have been linked to:

Alex Song: Spent two years with West Ham previously, his performances tailed off in the second year.
Sergio Canales: Canales' contract with Real Sociedad has expired
Mario Balotelli: Looney Toon of a player who had a really good season with Nice, and he is still only 27!
Jack Wilshere: West Ham family through and through, injury prone and will want mega bucks.
YaYa Toure: Released by Manchester City, has probably got at least a good year left in the tank, but would want huge wages.

We shall go on to the next catagory of players after the weekend, now these players are available for decent money. To whet your appetite The Pilgrim has earmarked Badou Ndiaye as a new recruit, the combative midfielder was one of the few shining lights in Stoke City's miserable season that eventually saw them relegated from the top flight, it is rather sad to 'cherry pick' players from clubs that have just gone down, but it has been done to West Ham on a regular basis in the past, and had it not been for this season's sucessful relegation fight it would be Hammers' players that the vultures would be circling around.

West Ham have also been firmly linked with the following players, James Tarkowski from Burnley, Salomon Rondon from The Baggies and Marlon from Barcelona, these names are in addition to a whole raft of players seemingly destined for The London Stadium, we shall write up what we know to be relatively factual rather than some of the absolute nonsense that is coming out from some of the Red Tops, for example the Arnoutovic to Manchester United garbage being spouted!

More news soon, be lucky - Ed