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This week’s journey into the Heart of Darkness that is being a West Ham United supporter in the era of David and Karren sees me pivot from the world-class stadium discussion to the world-class team.

It’s a bit of a deep dive into our transfer activity since the move to the Athletics Stadium. We can all see the stadium is anything but world-class, so there’s no doubt the shareholders have failed to deliver on that score, but what about the other side of Karren’s promise?




Now we all have our own opinions as to who our best players have been in this era, and as we all know, it’s David's opinion that counts. And, no, I don’t mean Moyes. That being the case, to avoid such subjectivity I’ll set a couple of rules around measuring the effectiveness of our transfer policy since the move.

It’s not about how much we have spent : the idea, for those at the back of the class, is to win the competition at the lowest possible cost. That applies to every club, not just West Ham United.

We also cannot ignore completely the players we already had on our books ahead of the move as all teams evolve gradually, with a few in and a few out most windows. The season prior to the move saw the club finish in a creditable 7th place, chalking up 16 wins , amassing 60 points and a positive goal difference of 14.

The side had a few decent players with one undeniably world class player, Dimitri Payet, making 30 appearances in the Premier League that season.

Nor should we ignore the contribution from our Academy, the club fund it, so let’s not ignore players that cost us no more than a few cab fares to and from the training ground.

The measure I’m going to go with for the purpose of this article is the number of Premier League appearances for the club since the move. One hundred and six players have debuted for the club since then. These are the players most often selected by whoever was picking the team at the time.

These are the tools the managers have been asked to work with, if you’ll pardon the phrase. They reflect the budget they’ve had to work within; let's, for arguments sake call them the Athletics Stadium All Stars XI.

One trophy, has of course, been delivered, the European Conference League, and David Moyes should always be remembered fondly in these parts for that achievement. it’s no wonder that six of the 'All Stars' starred in the night of glory in Prague.




Four of the All Stars had been regulars in the final season at the Boleyn, a season that in terms of Premier League performance has only been bettered once since the move, which tells us reasonably scientifically whether or not we have been watching a world-class team.

Any improvement has been sufficient to see us lift the third tier of European football silverware, but we’ve seen no sustained improvement in the Premier League. Let’s see who has featured the most though since the move.

In goal we will find Lukasz Fabianski, who was a signing from Swansea City. His 195 EPL appearances cost a fee of £7m and was deemed to be the best option between the sticks by both Manuel Pellegrini who signed him, and David Moyes who picked him regularly during his second spell.

A decent keeper, no doubt about it, and a good servant to the club, but few Hammers fans of a senior vintage would be putting him in an all-time West Ham United XI ahead of Phil Parkes, for whom the club, when playing at the Boleyn Ground, paid a then world record fee for.

The undisputed king of the left back spot in the Athletics Stadium era is Aaron Cresswell who joined the club a few seasons previous to the move from Ipswich Town. An absolute wand of a left peg, robbed of his legs by injury but versatile enough to fill in as part of a back three in his twilight years with the club.

If you are looking for the definition of a good pro then look no further, and he featured in 227 PL games since we relocated. A very, very good player but one to file in the outstanding value for money category rather than World Class, having cost the club just £4m.

The early days of our brave new world in Stratford saw us kick off against Chelsea with none other than Michail Antonio at right back. A selection that did not meet with David's approval, we know this because he told us all. What a club. An early sign though that not much had changed since the move, as ever, there wasn’t quite enough money to go around.

The two players to feature most frequently at right back since the move have been Pablo Zabaleta, who joined at the ripe age of 32 having given his best years to Manchester City, and Vladimir Coufal who gave his best years to West Ham United, making 147 appearances in the EPL in exchange for the £5.4m fee we paid Slavia Prague for his services.




Centre back is a position that ultimately determines what part of the table you finish in as far as English football is concerned. Get it wrong there and you’ll leak goals, the Premier League quickly sorts the wheat from the chaff.

Physically punishing, technically demanding, the team that wins the Premier League will always have decent centre backs. Only the richest of clubs however can afford the absolute crème de la crème in this part of the pitch, most have to make do and mend to a certain extent.

The number one pick of centre backs to wear our colours at the Athletics Stadium has been Angelo Ogbonna who made 174 of his 201 Premier League appearances for the club post the move. His fee of just £10m representing some of the best money the club has spent in the modern era.

Next up is a player who illustrates the issues we have had getting a settled pair in the backline, with Issa Diop featuring 96 times for the club in the PL since we moved. His fee of £22m was mostly recovered when we moved him on to Fulham.

Not a single West Ham United supporter would ever have him in our starting line-up ahead of Kurt Zouma, but he only featured on 82 occasions due to problems with his knees. Undoubtedly he was a world class player, but that only matters if you are on the pitch often enough to prove it.

What’s more, not many supporters would select Diop ahead of Craig Dawson - who cost around one tenth of the French defender's fee.

Midfield sees any number of players having travelled through the club in the Athletics Stadium era, but we have seen two or three of genuine quality and at least one worthy of the world-class label.

Declan Rice is of course that player, he was the best player we have seen represent us at the Athletics Stadium, he was the best player for the Republic of Ireland when he played for them, he is Arsenal and England’s best player now, and undoubtedly when he moves to Spain he will be Real Madrid's best player.




He cost us nothing, and his 204 Premier League appearances while on our books remain, at the time of writing, the highest number by a midfielder for us since the move. He will soon be caught however by Tomas Soucek, a signing made by David Moyes, initially on loan, but a player who soon became a fixture in the team following his permanent move.

The combined fees for his loan and transfer were around £18m and the Czech currently sits on 202 appearances in the PL for us. Not bad for a player some supporters don’t rate, but funnily enough managers do. He’s not far off being labelled as a player who does nothing but score.

The third of our midfield trio is of course Mark Noble, who split his career across the two grounds, but his 155 PL matches in Stratford just pips Manu Lanzini’s 153 and Pablo Fornals' 152. Noble, of course, was another Academy player who cost the club nothing but wages.

Our front three cost a combined £51m and are Said Benrahma with 110 appearances, Jarrod Bowen with 204 and of course Michail Antonio with his 242 appearances. Two of those three are undeniably great value for money transfers, with Bowen, in terms of quality being the jewel in the crown.

Antonio's contribution, whilst immense physically, would never be in the world-class category technically. He gave us what he had, but the point is he was giving it to us, not Manchester City or peak Manchester United. Bowen, on the other hand, would not look out of place at either of those two clubs.

Benrahma of course is the player we signed instead of Eberechi Eze, currently lighting up the Emirates Stadium while Benny is in Saudi, probably lighting a cigar. The wrong David made the decision when choosing between those two.

Overall though those three banged in 134 goals for the club in the Premier League since the move. The goals per £ ratio is good, the goals per combined games, less so. World-class costs a bit more than very good.

So, in terms of spend, those eleven players cost us around £120m in terms of fees paid, but when fees received are factored in, we actually turned a profit on that group of about £5m.




So far we’ve gotten 1,596 games between them, and with two of them still on the books, the cash profit on that group is likely to rise, as is the number of appearances. So, when we get it right, we get it right.

But only one of those eleven is getting in a world-class team, two at a push. The problem of course is it’s not a world class-team. Competitive, yes, six of them started in Prague, but as an XI they won nothing and I’m not sure how often, if at all, we got all of them on the pitch at the same time.

Premier League finishes have been between 6th and 14th since the move, nowhere near the 3rd place best ever finish in 1985/86,but in fairness, we as a club failed to build on that success either. Nobody though, at that time, promised us world-class. We were West Ham United, and we played at Upton Park.

Perhaps we have all misunderstood what Karren meant when making that promise. Maybe Karren didn’t actually mean "team", as in, all eleven players on the pitch at the same time, maybe she meant it would be more of an all-time XI. But only since history began, as the club's Marketing Department told us in 2016.

That they were the signings of four different managers but only one chairman might be a telling statistic however, as is the fact only three of them left us for any sort of a fee.

Running your car into the ground means you have no deposit for your next vehicle. If only we had a stadium capable of generating the sort of income being churned out at Tottenham Hotspur.

Sitting as we do though at the time of writing, just above the bottom three, nobody is under any illusion that we are be watching a world-class team this season either. The current side may be an improving team, but once again we are hearing dark noises about funds being limited this January.

One reason of course for those limited funds is the money we have wasted in the transfer market. Since moving to Stratford, Transfermarkt has us down as spending 1,118m euros on players, with just 554m euros coming in from sales.




The difference between the two numbers suggests we ought to have a residual group of players worth around 564m euros. Frankly I would be amazed if even the most one-eyed, optimistic assessment would put a current market value on our squad within 200m euros of that total.

It’s hard finding the money to buy the winter range when the summer collection is still on the shelf, as nobody liked the designs.

Failing to turn a consistent profit in the transfer market is of course what brings us to where we are. Far from having a world-class team, one that does actually play in the same XI, we have a squad lacking depth, a few players with potential for sure, but we are at the wrong end of the table.

The question is then posed, where does the money come from to buy new players? Rice doesn’t grow on trees, you know. Ticket sales? I covered that off last week and the club generates considerably less than others with comparable capacities.

The stadium generating additional income? That was the week before last… I noticed there was a boxing match at Tottenham’s ground the other night. Ours, well, not actually ours, but you know what I mean, was in darkness.

The sponsors? We did a short term deal with a gambling company ahead of them being banned from being on shirts, meaning we are actively seeking a new sponsor right now. A relegation battle, unhappy supporters, a ground with a dreadful reputation, and ownership best described as colourful. Bit of a hard sell, but good luck Nathan!

That brings us to the shareholders who will of course hide behind PSR as a reason to cap the amount they inject ,if they inject anything at all. It’s never a good sign when the people that own a business don’t really want to invest in it.

So, any upgrades to the current team will come from the traditional source of funds, player sales. It was a well-trodden path at Upton Park and we are on the same journey at Stratford. It might make you wonder why we bothered moving at all.




The simplest way to assess where we really are though is to ask a couple of questions. How many of last Saturday's starting XI against Burnley would get into the Athletics Stadium all-stars team I named above? Four, maybe five of them?

And how many of the Athletics stadium All Stars XI get into a West Ham United greatest ever side? Maybe one. There’s a debate. As good as Rice was for us I wouldn’t pick him in midfield ahead of Bonds or Brooking.

I know that’s a cruel measure by anyone standards, but it wasn’t me that promised a world-class team. Our current crop of players have one or two who would feature in that All Stars line-up a few years from now, but as for reaching the status of 'world-class team', that’s a huge ask, and when we’re sitting around the bottom three it looks a long way off.

Making the leap from very good to great is something only a few players achieve. Hopefully they’ll prove me wrong.

In the absence of a credible business plan, the club's vice chair appears to be banking on them doing just that. Should they fail to do so it’s only a matter of time before the rate the club burns through cash in the transfer market far exceeds the business's ability to generate the cash to fund it - and the apocalypse will have arrived.

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