West Ham United have problems with their recruitment and transfer strategy.
Since 2010, when David Gold and David Sullivan began their takeover of the club, West Ham
have spent a lot of money on a lot of players, but with limited return on their outlay and
little sense of overall direction.
Since the 2010/11 window, West Ham have only made a transfer profit once, in 2017/18 when
Andre Ayew, Diafra Sakho, and others were sold.
Much of the issue comes from David Sullivan and his son, David Sullivan Junior, involving
themselves in transfers, from scouting and meeting agents, to negotiating.
With little in the way of football expertise, support has to come from within the club to
enhance their efforts.
But there has not been continuity at the club in this area since 2018, when Tony Henry,
West Ham’s Director of Player Recruitment, was dismissed from West Ham.
Henry wrote an email that was leaked in which he allegedly stated that the club did not
want to sign any more African players because they “caused mayhem” when not playing.
In July 2018 he was banned from football by the FA for a year after admitting a misconduct
charge.
Sullivan has been promising additions to and investment in the scouting and recruitment
team since at least 2018, after Henry was sacked.
In an interview quoted in the Evening Standard in January of that year, Sullivan said, “Only
the manager can sign players…I am going to delegate the whole thing to a new analysis
system and a new head of recruitment, massive video analysis department, increase the scouting.”
He went on to add: “We won’t be signing a player based on who the manager has never
seen play…
We are not going to spend money for the sake of it.”
West Ham then spent over £90m on seven players, signed three others, including Jack Wilshere,
on free transfers; of these, arguably only Lukasz Fabianski has been a genuine success,
while Felipe Anderson was good in his first season but dropped off, and Issa Diop and
Fabian Balbuena have been good in patches.
Of course, fees are not the only outlay: wages, signing on bonuses, and playing bonuses are
also high and account for further spend, as do fees paid to agents.
West Ham sought to address this issue in June 2018 when Mario Husillos was appointed as
West Ham’s Director of Football at the request of Manuel Pellegrini, with whom he had worked
at Malaga.
It was a bizarre set-up, where Pellegrini effectively lobbied for and helped appoint
his own boss.
Husillos had coached Malaga’s B team in 2006/07, but returned to work as Pellegrini’s
Sporting Director in August 2012 for two spells that saw him leave the club in 2015, before
returning a third time, without Pellegrini, in 2017.
At the time of his West Ham appointment, Husillos was widely credited online with signing and
developing players like Isco, Nacho Monreal, and Jeremy Toulalan.
Except that he didn’t – Husillos might have helped develop those players but they
were signed under Malaga’s previous Sporting Director, Antonio Fernandez.
In actual fact, Husillos oversaw two very poor sets of recruitment, the latter of which,
in 2017/18, spanned a season that saw the club relegated.
Malaga sold a lot of players for profit under Husillos, but he did not recruit them in the
first place; there’s almost an argument that Malaga haemorrhaged good players after
he joined and while a small profit was made on Isco, players like Toulalan, Joaquin, Santi
Cazorla, and Salomon Rondon left for below or equal to their market value, according
to Transfermarkt.
So while Malaga started to recoup investment, the transfer activity at the time looks more
like a fire sale than considered bargaining.
When Pellegrini left West Ham, so did Husillos and his son, Mario Husillos Jr., who was scouting
for the club; Claudio Carsi, a long-time colleague of Pellegrini and Juan Pellegrini, the manager’s
son, also left, as well as two other scouts.
according to an article in The Athletic.
This obviously runs counter to the logic of having a Director of Football or Sporting
Director, as well as an analytics or scouting team: the Sporting Director is intended to
sit above the manager and ensure continuity and planning as and when they depart.
Aligning the scouting process to the two men condemned West Ham to a further overhaul,
both in terms of staffing, but also in identifying targets that make sense for the new boss,
in this case David Moyes.
West Ham’s scouting budget is also comparably small, especially in comparison with other
Premier League sides.
When Moyes joined, one of his conditions of returning was that he would have more say
over transfer policy.
At the moment, it’s not yet clear whether he’s staying – his contract’s extension
is dependent on performance-related trigger clauses – or whether those assurances were
given.
Indeed, managerial flux is another issue tied to recruitment: since 2010, when Gianfranco
Zola was sacked, West Ham have had five different managers, one of whom, Sam Allardyce, was
there for four of the ten seasons; Moyes himself is in his second stint.
Differing styles, differing player requirements, the desire to refresh the squad: every time
a new manager comes in, West Ham have to adapt to these things without any sense of an overarching
approach or direction.
West Ham need a Director of Football and a bulked out scouting department.
They need to appoint managers in line with an overarching football strategy, and to recruit
players based on the manager and their style.
Continuity can be assured by giving the Director of Football oversight of managerial appointments
and decision-making power over player signings.
Every team requires good results on the pitch and West Ham find themselves in a relegation
battle.
Good results require a good manager and good players, playing a system and style that complement
each other.
West Ham have had a scattergun approach to transfers and managerial appointments that
have meant a lot of outlay has ended up yielding little in the way of on-pitch progress.
Slaven Bilic’s seventh place finish in 2015/16 was West Ham’s best since a fifth place
finish in 1998/99; they also finished seventh in 2001/02.
But with the move to the London Stadium before the 2016/17 season, West Ham have received
a significant financial windfall much of which is being squandered on poor player acquisition
and inflated wages, worsened by a failure to invest in good analytics and scouting departments.
According to another article in The Athletic, “West Ham’s transfer policy has been criticised
less for what they have spent and more for who they have spent it on.”
The recruitment process has been marked by attempts to fill gaps or sign good or promising
players but without a sense of how they fit the team’s overall approach.
Centre-forward Sebastien Haller is a good example: a fine player who excelled for Eintracht
Frankfurt has stuttered at West Ham because the team’s system doesn’t suit him.
£45m’s of outlay but with no overall strategy – symptomatic of where West Ham have been
going wrong.
Spending on scouting and analytics under a Director of Football will harmonise recruitment
and ensure that players are the right fit for the manager and their strategy.
It’s especially important for a club like West Ham with the aspirations and set-up to
finish higher than mid-table; instead, poor planning and spending has left them looking
at relegation and losing money.
West Ham are a team set to do well, but a lack of planning and a sense of direction
are holding back the club, and it’s simple to address.