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Now come on, raise your hands if you thought that we would not see Callum Wilson’s name in the frame to join West Ham? No? Thought not.

Of course it was always an option. Just how soon, how much and how do you square it with our fans would be the consideration.




All I can say is that I doubt Graham Potter or Kyle Macaulay were raising their hands, even though deep down they would have known this was coming.

You can bet that David Sullivan couldn’t care less what us fans think about such deals. Frees, cheaper than buying, injury-prone but we’ll skip that, dumped by one of our Premier League rivals as over the hill, legs gone; surely we should run a mile?

But his agent is Sullivan’s mate, so when you hear Wilson’s representatives are talking to West Ham you mean Sullivan chatting to Will Salthouse, who already has Max Cornet and Arron Wan-Bissaka at the club while Michail Antonio is limbo and he has just found new club for Arron Cresswell at Stoke. What’s not to like about the deal?

Well, an awful lot. And this is not about Wilson coming or not. It’s about the way we operate. And just for a change, I respect something Tim Steidten - axed because of the calamitous transfer policy last year that got us into such a financial mess - said.

The German has been chipping away to news outlets in his homeland, so it does not seem there was a NDA when Sullivan fired him. Tim reckons that in the Bundesliga, clubs have recruitment departments run by football professionals who have a budget to work with and are left to make the decisions.

Tim then pointed out that in the Premier League, club owners come up with the money and then have an emotional involvement in transfers and keep suggesting players. Who could he possibly be thinking of?

The issue is that nobody else in the Premier League operates like us. Clubs employ technical directors and recruitment specialists. Owners, chairman, boards of directors do not have a say in player selection.




However everything is different at West Ham. Sullivan has always interfered, he’s now effectively Director of Football and he runs an agent–led policy with his favoured agents offering targets and players.

This is from the dark ages. It didn’t work at Birmingham where Sullivan famously said he knew more about the transfer market than his manager. I think Steve Bruce was around at the time; Birmingham won next to nothing.

And it hasn’t worked at West Ham, either. A string of managers employed by Sullivan have fought the system and failed. Sam Allardyce almost internally combusted at the situation.

Slaven Bilic, this week, has given an interview where he refutes the suggestion that all the bad signings were his fault and the good ones were produced by Sullivan.

David Moyes is the only manager to have contained Sullivan’s excesses. We won a European trophy and enjoyed three seasons of European action on his watch. And we are still seeing on social media that our current decline is his fault and that he "dithered" on deals.

But in the industry, Moyes is credited by his peers with doing better than anyone against the Sullivan transfer "mafia". Everyone knows what a West Ham manager faces. Moyes was not perfect, we know that, but his attitude was that if you sign someone I don’t want, then I won’t play him.

I’m told that when he handled those famous Monday calls from the owner, Moyes said all the right things, flattered the ego, and then went off and did what he felt was best. I bet he handled Steidten the same way, the suggestion being that the only deal the German handled from start to finish was Dino Mavropanos. Make of that what you like.

So here we are with a transfer window-full of misinformation and lies to fans being treated like fools. We were promised a summer of change, everybody bar Jarrod Bowen, Crysencio Summerville and Wan-Bissaka were for sale in a massive refit that would easily raise £150million and revitalise an ageing squad with new, fresh, young prospects.




That was never on, though. How do you change a whole squad in one window, while telling the world you are broke? It’s too laughable for words. We are left with not being able to find clubs who will help us out of this mess by taking our ‘rubbish’ off our hands and paying us good money to do so.

Frankly there are some who believe we are in a greater financial mess than we think. Just look at the way we have shifted out anyone whose contract is up. Ruthless yes, and I won’t try to differ from the decisions to release as many as we did, and who they were.

But we’ve sold Mo Kudus to pay off a £40million bank loan, due last week and instantly replaced with a new, similar, one by Barclays Bank.

But the cost cutting runs deeper. Sullivan never replaced Steidten as DoF, although it is believed Potter expected a new man installed. Then there is Ian Taylor, who walked away from the role as Director of Communications midway through last season.

Frankly there are those who feel he needed a medal for navigating that role. It was a well-paid job, crucial to the image of the club and the way we handle media at all levels. Yet he has not been replaced.

I can’t emphasise more the importance of that role. Taylor was highly thought of, he’d worked for British cycling and London Irish and had the respect of the media generally. The cost cutting sees us in a position where we are considering players like Wilson. The social media and YouTube meltdown has been spectacular.

Fans can see through this. Wilson’s 33, once good enough for England and has the technique to survive in the top flight. But Newcastle let him go, their fans are suggesting his legs "have gone" and he turned down a deal that was based on appearances and goals. Ten injuries over four years, and no goals in 18 appearances last season says it all.




Frankly, if you are going to axe Danny Ings and Antonio and bring in Wilson, you are saying everything about the state of our finances. It seems we have offered him something like he turned down at Newcastle, an incentive-based deal for a player worth around £46,000-a-week.

Watching the day unfold when the deal was mooted, it started with it being made known that Potter and Kyle Macaulay were against the deal, Potter seemingly fully aware of the reaction from the fans. He could sense that a mile away.

By the end of the day it was being floated that Potter wanted a heavily-incentivised deal based on appearances, injuries and goals. And then he was off with the squad for the three-game trip to the USA - Manchester United in New Jersey on Saturday, Everton in Chicago on Wednesday and Bournemouth in Atlanta on Sunday, August 2.

He has taken with him not the promised youthful refit, but last season’s players-including Edson Alvarez—joining up mid-trip after his Mexico exertions—and Nayef Aguerd, some of whom may still be sold before the season starts. I think I’ll watch these games from behind the sofa with a bottle of whisky for company.

Potter has travelled having talked up the fitness trip to Germany, explaining the thinking behind the team bonding process. "Fitness", "team spirit", "socialising", "trust", "friendship" and "togetherness" were all phrases he used.

All of that will be an improvement on last season’s unfolding disaster. It must not be forgotten that it was Salthouse who talked Sullivan into employing Julen Lopetegui, a disastrous choice as replacement for Moyes, as many observers predicted.

But we all know there is a need for a new goalkeeper, a couple of midfielders and an extra striker. Malick Diouf and Kyle Walker-Peters are good signings, but we need so many more. Callum Wilson does not appear on many fans’ lists.

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