Forum | General Discussion

It has been revealed this morning that West Ham United have managed to sign Evan Ferguson.

We’ve been competing for the Brighton player’s signature all window and have finally managed to strike a deal; however, it will come at a cost.

The club have agreed on a deal which is a straight loan and there will be NO OPTION to buy.

Having a no-option clause in a deal like this really isn’t ideal for the Hammers.

If you’d like to look at the positives, you could say that Potter and Kyle have done this because they need more time to identify targets yet still need someone this season so a straight six-month loan would be good enough.

A straight six-month loan on an injury-prone player is better than striking a deal of a six-month loan with a £40,000,000 obligation.

Along with that, it was probably the only way they could get dismal Dave to agree to any signing, so we’d have to settle with a loan.

However, the Hammers now run the risk of another Lingard situation or another Kalvin Phillips.

There’s a chance we get him in and he does brilliantly for us, instead of the £40,000,000 fee Brighton was demanding, they’ll suddenly be asking for 60m+ because he found a bit of form.

Or, we've dodged a bullet in the case that he gets injured straight away, and he's ruled out for a long time.

Evan Ferguson’s loan deal is set to be agreed and his medical is expected to be completed within the next 24/48hrs.

The loan fee is anticipated to be between £1,000,000 to £5,000,000.

West Ham will cover his wages entirely and bonuses are expected to be included too.

With an extended winter window is it West Ham’s chance to finally bring in another striker, or is it time to give the rumours a rest and accept the inevitable feeling that no signings will be incoming?

Under Potters reign so far we’ve seen the boss utilise the youth academy but the majority of our promising attacking youth are practically all out on loan!

George Earthy alongside Callum Marshall are both currently out on loan and the Hammers sealed their own fate through negotiations due to not having a recall option.

So with the use of youth out the window regarding the attacking options, our hope is left to Uncle Ingy, or dithering Dave upstairs.

The latest news is disappointing, to say the least.

‘Still Looking FC’ has struck again with Taiwo Awoniyi being ruled out due to Nottingham Forest’s vast price point, along with RB Leipzig’s Andre Silva starting to run out of patience with us as we’ve been delaying for a couple of weeks now.

The latest rumour to spark up and crash down would be Bryan Brobbey, the young Dutch international who had reportedly flown to London in an attempt to force a move to us.

Ajax stated that it would take a 6-month loan with an obligation to buy of €30,000,000.

However, a reoccurring theme of the club ‘not having enough money’ keeps coming up, despite our supposed £57,000,000 bid for Jhon Duran, which was rejected earlier this month.

The club is still weighing up the decision to go for Evan Ferguson on loan from Brighton, with the Seagulls now open to the idea of a loan deal which earlier on the window they refused to accept.

Ferguson is said to be Potters’ number-one choice, yet his injury record is causing us a headache in deciding whether to go for him or not.

So, with all our current striker targets seemingly ruled out and with a week left in the transfer window, should we attempt to scramble a striker in and bite the bullet on another potential failure of a striker?

Or should we learn our lesson, attempt to wait and let Kyle work with Potter to come up with some targets.

The only downside to this would be that we obviously wouldn’t have anyone for the remainder of the season due to Fulkrug’s lengthy spell-out.

Swings and roundabouts for West Ham at the minute…

A solid performance but one that’s shadowed over by the abysmal refereeing performance tonight.

As soon as the officials were announced for the match, you just knew it’d be a Premier League game full of cards, chaotic decisions and utter carnage in general.

The game kicked off and started sorely for the Hammers, first 10 minutes had the look of a Lopetegui rec team, conceding two in eight. Fortunately, the second goal was ruled out for offside.

But the 80 other minutes of the match is what we’d all been hoping for; we FINALLY saw a West Ham side who wanted to fight for the ball, who tried to chase the defenders and one that saw us fight for the badge.

After an end-to-end first half, chaos erupted just before the break when Lucas Paqueta went down after receiving a ‘love-tap’ elbow to the stomach. The decision went to VAR for Violent Conduct and ended in no Red Card.

General fans of the wonderful game may come to the conclusion that it was incredibly light and had nothing in it, but Hammers fans’ memories would’ve peeled back to the incident of Tomas Soucek being sent off away to Fulham for the same thing!

Thank you for your consistency VAR!

After the red card denial, Matty Cash decided to play some games and complained to the Ref after a push from Soucek, second later followed up by Digne tumbling after he mounted Alvarez.

Not to mention that when Mings received his unfortunate injury, he picked up the ball in the air to stop and walk off the pitch! How is that not a card PGMOL? I’ll be awaiting our inevitable apology on Monday morning.

The second half was fantastic for the Irons, with a great display of football and chances created, just the finishing was lacklustre which is to be expected with four attacking players out.

A great ball in by Alvarez and a simple but delightful header from Emerson saw us make it 1-1. We were oh so close to nicking it at the end with Soucek taking it around the keeper and Paqueta slotting it in an open net but all for it to be disallowed due to Soucek being offside.

A game that ended with each team getting a point, but a game that felt like we fought and won on paper, a rare statement to make as of late, but today we were the better team.

As Potter said, “It was a performance that was full of personality.”

Let’s hope we aren’t met with the disappointing news of another injury tomorrow morning, as towards the end of the match, Paqman pulled up clutching his thigh after attempting to chase the ball.

It’s hard to give an Org MOTM, Paqueta, Wan-Bissaka and Kilman all looked on top of their game today, and so did Ollie Scarles from when he was substituted on.

Summerville and Bowen are expected to make a return for the next match against Chelsea; hopefully, this will enlighten our attacking woes and get rid of some of that pressure on precious Uncle Ingy.