Julen's January? Or Sullivan's Surprise?
We're only three days into 2025, yet the news has already started from above about the hierarchy and down on the pitch with Lopetegui.
Apart from recent news of Lopetegui being on a three-game watch yet again, it would come for him at the worst time possible with Jarrod announcing on Instagram that he had suffered an injury, a bit of research would've led you to have known that he'd be out for around 6-8 weeks with the injury.
So, not only have we now lost our most crucial player, but also our captain. Lopetegui hinted in his most recent press conference that Tomas Soucek would be the replacement for the time being, which I believe is a great decision. Tomas is one of the few players over and over to show that he'd run through a brick wall for the club, and if you looked at some of his pitch injuries, you probably would've thought he had.
Now, having a replacement captain is good to see. However, it doesn't exactly fill the massive hole we now have in our attack with Bowen out. Assuming the injury is on the more positive side, we can probably expect him to perhaps make a return by mid-February. That would mean 6 Premier League games missed, along with a couple of FA Cup games, depending on our progress.
We have Summerville who could come in, I'd love to see the introduction of Guilherme into the team more frequently, he has looked like a breath of fresh air whenever he's come on, obviously heavily inexperienced and still needs to gel with the rest of the team, but giving him that game time could bring out the talent that we saw in him.
With Bowen out, transfer rumours obviously went through the roof when that was announced, so we're completely flooded with these fake rumours.
However, it has been confirmed by several people, as well as the help of common knowledge, that we're unsurprisingly prioritising to get a centre forward as well as a box-to-box midfielder this window.
Names that have been thrown around so far have been Chukwuemeka, Dewsbury-Hall and Evan Ferguson. All of these named players we're supposedly interested in are on loan. I suspect that we might have a lot of rumours flying around, but in terms of incoming players it looks like loan deals will be explored, hopefully with buy options... please West Ham.
Along with the transfer rumours, it is said that the man who will be leading the line for our targets will NOT be our technical director, it will be David Sullivan. As well as Lopetegui being under pressure, Steidten is also facing pressure after what the board believes to be an 'underwhelming window'.
So, as he's under pressure, Sullivan has decided to step in and see what he can do... I hope he manages to secure a pleasant surprise. However, I suspect we should expect a Salthouse-based window and players that he has under his wing.
Three days in, and the rumours have exhausted me; we HAVE to get players in this window sadly. The current squad we have is simply not good enough, and with additions needed, trusting David Sullivan with this task is not something I'm too hopeful of.
Perhaps I'm overreacting, but with this knowledge coming to life, it seems that this is the build-up to the end.
