I would like to wish every WHTID reader, contributor, author, lurker and their loved ones a Merry Christmas. May Santa bring you some joy, love, peace and togetherness in these sad and challenging days.
I know this is first and foremost just a football blog, but as some of us got to know one another either personally or through regular online conversation on here, I know that it has been a very draining, tough, gloomy, crazy year for many of us, so let’s hope the next year will see improvements and happier days for the world and our little WHTID community.
With a bit of Friar Tuck West Ham can hopefully be a tiny factor in lifting our collective spirits in the upcoming weeks.
It’s looking promising so far this season…despite our hiccup at Stamford Bridge yesterday.
This column will be a bit of a jamboree bag of Hammers Allsorts as I’m starting to type away on Saturday, with the game at Chelsea coming up on Monday evening, so this will probably go up on Tuesday or Wednesday.
I will try to add bits and pieces after the game to cover the Chelsea performance as well, at least briefly, but that shall come further down this time around.
The end of the year without fail always means the start of another transfer window. And already we have apparently managed to seal the deal for our first new signing after various rumours about the player in the previous weeks and months.
Yes, I’m talking about the Copenhagen Cannavaro, Frederik Alves Ibsen.
A promising Danish Under-21 international defender who plays primarily as a centre back but can also deputise at full back.
His mother is Brazilian, his dad a Viking, I mean Danish bloke. Sounds like a pretty good gene pool for a defender. He briefly played in Brazil for Coritiba after being discovered while kicking a ball about with his cousins on a family visit when he was 15 years old. Two years later he returned to his home, Hvidovre, a suburb of Copenhagen. Once back he was quickly snapped up by Silkeborg IF, first for their U19s, but not wasting much time he was impressive enough to get called up without further ado to their first team playing in Denmark’s top division.
At the age of only 21 he has run out 50 times for Silkeborg’s first XI which indicates that he is an early bloomer (a bit like, dare I say it, Declan Rice, we shall find out soon if the parallels end there).
Alves Ibsen is an impressive physical presence, tall (6ft 2 in) and strongly built already, yet also athletic. Highlight videos of defenders tend to be ever so slightly less exciting than those of their striker counterparts, but you can tell that Alves Ibsen can read games well, intercept balls, time his tackles to perfection and yes, he can also pick a pass after winning the ball from the opposition. With his height he is going to win plenty of headers at both ends of the pitch, so that bodes well too.
Now, let’s make no mistake here. the transfer fee is rumoured to be a very modest £1.2m. Which is jordnødder really, that’s Danish for peanuts.
It’s a calculated risk and at that price sounds like smart business to me. You can never have too many good defenders and the ceiling for this chap seems to be pretty high. We all know Moyes is quite happy to work with young players and bring out the best in them, helping them to develop and grow. It also helps that Alves Ibsen can cover several defensive positions – especially important for a small squad like ours with limited ability to replace injured players with like for like bench riders.
And let’s not forget young Portugeezer Goncalo Bento Soares Cardoso. Another promising centre back who at the age of 20 has already skippered our U23s on occasion, taking on the role of official vice-captain by the looks of it. So the manager of the U23s seems to trust him.
For a spell it looked like Cardoso’s days at the club might be numbered, but we all have seen this season that you should never write off players too early, just remember how Cresswell and Balbuena have turned things around for themselves.
Maybe Cardoso just needs a bit more time to adjust and adapt.
Cardoso is a tall lad and ball-playing defender just like Alves Ibsen, but the Portuguese was brought in for more money in the summer before last, costing around the £3m mark back then. Which doesn’t necessarily mean that Cardoso has a better chance of playing PL football than Alves Ibsen.
Again, this is all a very calculated (modestly priced) gamble. At some point the likes of Balbuena and Ogbonna will need replacing. Is it likely that both Alves Ibsen and Cardoso will make the grade and become regular PL starters ? Probably not.
But the odds improve if only one of them needs and manages to establish himself in the first team. Once that happens then the money spent on bringing them in will pale into insignificance.
What are my expectations for the transfer window, apart from Ibsen ?
What will Santa bring to West Ham ? Or take away ?
Well, the latest big name rumoured to be showing up in the arrivals lounge is Oleksandr Zinchenko from Manchester City.
The versatile Ukrainian has been struggling to cement a place in Man City’s star-studded line up (which happens to a lot of players, it’s what happens when a club can sign quality players left, right, and centre).
The 24-year-old is what we in Germany call an egg-laying wooly milk sow, a jack of all trades being the British phrase equivalent.
At this point we only know he would come in on loan. Whether that might eventually translate into a permanent deal of some kind remains to be seen. I’m sure we could afford a loan.
Zinchenko would give Moyes plenty of options where to put the Ukrainian maestro to help our cause as he can be used as attacking midfielder or on the left side, as LB or wing back. Being a good passer with an ability to hold on to the ball surely is a skill we can use.
And of course there have been rumours about Josh King coming in on a cut-price deal from Bournemouth, yet another player from Slavia Prague (Abdallah Sima, striker) or even midfielder Alex Kral from Spartak Moscow who happens to share an agent with Vladimir Coufal, but won’t be cheap.
The thing about bringing players in on loan is that we already have the maximum two loan slots allowed at the club filled with Dawson and Benrahma. So if we wanted to bring in Zinchenko on loan we would first have to let Dawson go or make Benrahma’s deal permanent in January.
I suppose we all have an inkling what the more likely outcome is going to be…
As for players leaving, well, we would need to raise some money if we want to make more signings (and a bit of dosh will have to be put aside for next summer already making the Benrahma signing permanent).
The players who would raise most moolah from a sale are the ones we would hate to lose, although it may still eventually happen, Declan Rice and Tomas Soucek being the obvious names in this regard.
There are those we might be able to sell, but who would generate only modest funds (Yarmolenko, Lanzini, Haller) or next to nothing (Fredericks, Snodgrass).
So I wouldn’t be surprised to see far less activity in terms of transfers as some of us might wish for. And why not ? Moyes has got a tight-knit group of players at West Ham who seem to enjoy performing together, fighting and running for one another. You don’t want to upset team chemistry too much at this point. And we’re still skint of course, so I wouldn’t expect us to pay more than £10m for any incoming player in January.
As for Declan Rice I’m gradually trying to get used to the idea of a West Ham team without him running our midfield as that’s what is likely to happen in the not too distant future. It’ll sting to see him play for Chelsea or Manchester United, but at some point even that pain will pass.
I shall try to enjoy his games for us while he’s still wearing the claret and blue shirt…nobody bigger than the club…and all that!
So, the Chelsea game. On the face of the result it was a bad defeat.
But until their second goal we really gave them a run for their rubles, sorry, money. Somehow we didn’t score and Chelsea did, as they and their star-studded ensemble often do.
Yes, it’s a bit of a setback and not the Christmas present we were all looking for. But as much as we would have wanted to get another one over them, it was not to be. And in all honesty, Chelsea away is not the kind of game we gotta pencil in for a win as a matter of principle.
Brighton though is a different matter. We gotta score a few against them!
COYI!!!
Stay safe and healthy, everyone!
Hamburg football update: Mixed results for my local teams. St.Pauli got a 3:0 drubbing at home to Düsseldorf and look like proper relegation fodder this season. Hamburg SV on the other hand won in a highly professional display 2:1 against Bilic’s former club Karlsruhe.
This puts them back in second spot in what promises to be a tight and exciting race for promotion.