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From Madrid with hope

It’s been a while since I sat down to write about West Ham and pleasingly, a new face in the form of 25 year old Frenchman, Sebastien Haller has since arrived.

Along with a few friends, we went away to Madrid to visit our friend who’s been living in the Spanish capital for a couple of years. My takeaways from a great trip that also saw us visit both Atletico’s relatively new Wanda Metropolitano and the Santiago Bernabeu were Kieran Trippier’s name on an Atleti shirt looks very odd, the Spanish metro is far cleaner than the tube, plus McDonald’s in the UK needs to start selling beer like Spain!

As Manuel Pellegrini embarks on his second season managing at the London Stadium, the excitement is already building for what as fans we hope is successful and enjoyable campaign. Along with my family, I’ll be at the stadium on Saturday as we play host to La Liga outfit, Athletic Bilbao. Watching both Fornals and Haller make their home debuts will be enjoyable: let’s hope the two men with a combined fee of roughly £64 million pounds can lay on a couple of goals and assists like they did against Hertha Berlin.

Expectations are understandably high, and with the additions we have made coupled with the fact Anderson, Diop, Balbuena alongside a couple of others now have a full season of Premier League experience, we should be looking up. The opening fixture at home to the Champions is clearly the toughest test you could ask for. I’d like to see us win obviously but at the very least not lose convincingly, and use the attacking talent we now have in forward areas.

Our record signing who has represented France at every youth level, even featuring with centre back Issa Diop, is a real coup for the club. The statistics never lie: we have acquired a man as tall as me (6ft 3) who contributed 20 goals and 12 assists in all competitions. Haller was a part of a dynamic and dangerous trio consisting of Luka Jovic and Ante Rebic, the former now a Real Madrid player and the latter being repeatedly linked to Inter Milan and Atletico Madrid. Our new No. 22 was integral to Frankfurt’s domestic success as well as their journey to the Europa league semi-final. Not only can the Frenchman hold the ball up and drop deep to link up play, he has a great shot and will impress with his skill and hard work.

Similarly, former Villarreal midfielder, Fornals looks set to be a bargain. The Spaniard looks tactically flexible in that he’ll be able to play as a traditional 10 but also slightly deeper as an 8. Our new No. 18 will hopefully be able to interchange nicely with the likes of Lanzini, Wilshere and Anderson and provide a fluid quartet behind Haller. When we announced the arrival of the 23 year old playmaker, I distinctly remember a Spanish journalist and La Liga expert stating we’d got a great deal and he was surprised that a number of the top six clubs had not seriously pursued him.

We are very much in the cluster of clubs who are as they say the ‘best of the rest’ but we definitely should challenge for the European places while also looking to go far and try to win the League and or the FA Cup. In my opinion, the teams in and around us include Leicester, Wolves and probably Everton. The foxes may well struggle to replace ‘slabhead’ Maguire if he departs for Old Trafford, Wolves may prioritise the Europa League, while Everton have just sold one of their most important players to PSG in Gueye. No doubt these teams will all still achieve some success but, with the players we have, we really should be contending for that seventh position.

Ultimately, a season for West Ham and the fans often entails ups and certainly downs. However with a bit of luck and hopefully some consistent goal scoring from Haller, we’ll be in for an enjoyable season with few worries. The slight concern is that if we get injuries to several key players, i.e. Diop, Rice, Haller etc. the depth is concerning. Despite that concern, we are heading into the 2019/2020 Premier League season with the best starting 11 we’ve had in a long time with a great manager, and it’s about time we got some luck with injuries, surely?

Hope everyone is well, and has a good week.

During writing and drafting this, Fabianski appears to have picked up a minor groin injury in the warm up against Hertha Berlin. Sadly, it’s therefore very unlikely he’ll feature against Bilbao on Saturday, but he hopefully should be fit for the opening day against City.

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