Forum | General Discussion

The woes are over, the season is done! West Ham have finished the 2024/25 campaign in 14th place with a win at Portman Road, Wolves were held to a draw, which saw them drop to 16th, whilst Manchester United could only secure 15th with 42 points, the Hammers finishing with 43.

We started the season with a 2-1 Loss to Aston Villa and ended with a 3-1 Win to Ipswich, completely different sides, but it’s nice to see the squad ending on a win. Ipswich were far from a good side this season, but a win is a win, and as the fans have seen, the club has struggled against the relegated sides… Southampton.

As always, the keeper has to have one scary moment in each game and Fabianski had a frightening moment loosing the ball to the attacker, but fortunately Ipswich weren’t able to capitalise on his mistake, the same couldn’t be said for the Tractors as Bowen was gifted the ball, a pass to Ward Prowse saw us go 1-0 up into the break.

In another common occurrence this season, we conceded towards the beginning of the second half, yet our lead was restored just a few minutes later, Bowen with a lovely one-two saw him lace the ball in anger off Thomas Tuchel, thundering the ball into the net to make it 2-1. The rest of the game was seen out with Kudus coming on as a substitute, making it three with a curling effort and no celebration to match the goal.

The three points launched the Hammers into 14th place, finishing above Manchester United and Spurs. Finishing 14th isn’t what anyone at the club wanted, but considering the situation we were in, the squad managed to secure the best position they could coming into the closing games.

A full circle moment and appearance for Aaron Cresswell in his final game as a Hammer, Fabianski making his final appearance, alongside Coufal. No involvement for Danny Ings.. which pretty much sums up the underwhelming career he’s had at West Ham. It is expected that a lot of people involved in the starting squad won’t be here next season and to be quite frank, it is what West Ham need.

11 Wins, 10 Draws and 17 Losses, a season to forget and finally the season is over.

Starting count of when silly season began to start, for the media was the 19th of May, as it has only been three days since, West Ham have so far been linked to twenty-one different players, names could be provided if needed.

Why are so many names being suddenly sparked up? That would be because our finances have been ‘calculated’. The Hammers will be expected to earn an average of around £125,000,000 for this Premier League season, which is obviously without any player sales or outgoings in the future. The earning of £125 million will be the lowest income for West Ham since the pandemic, back in the 2020/21 season.

There’s a lot of chatter around the fact that we are one of the few clubs that are close on the PSR rulings, which would make sense from an outside perspective, seeing as we’ve simply been doing a lot of buying and not much selling. That is going to change this window, as we already know Potter likes to have a smaller group of players, as well as the Sky interview affirming this with Potter claiming: “It’s not major surgery, just adjustments”

The club currently have 26 players Potter can use [This includes injured players], and without any business taking place, the numbers are automatically reduced to 22 players as Fabianski, Cresswell, Coufal, and Ings will all leave on a free, as well as Soler and Ferguson returning to their original clubs.

The club will be forced in having to bring homegrown players, as the requirement is eight and with three HG players leaving already it means we would be down to five, but if Freddie Potts were to be used, that goes to six, assuming Antonio does have his contract renewed.

We know players will be sold, but there’s no point in attempting to predict how much we will get for each player, how many years the transfer fee will be paid across, etc, there are too many differing factors.

What we do know is that we’re now saving a load of money via the wage bill… thankfully, Uncle Ingy is gone, as well as a few others. But we do know that before joining the club, Potter was promised backing in the summer as well as any money that would be raised through player sales. Instead of looking at the ifs, buts and maybes, it’s best to look at the facts.

Fans know a handful of players will be sold with Potter also affirming this, we understand that we don’t have a massive amount of money to spend, but we still are able to and a lot can happen depending on the offers we receive for certain players, such as Kudus, Paqueta (if he was found not guilty) and others.

West Ham have had such a bad season that we’re already bringing out all the rumours, and the window isn’t open for 25 more days; this’ll be interesting.