Our bar staff here at the Transfer Tavern have kept close tabs on West Ham United in recent seasons.
The side have been through a big change in the past five years, rising from the Championship to becoming one of the stand-out teams in the Premier League last term.
It’s been a tough ask to be a Hammer over the past few years, that was up until the arrival of Mr Bilic last season.
The Hammers have been blessed since the Croatian arrived from Besiktas, before that it had been a bit of a whirlwind for the East Londoners.
The highs of promotions, the lows of relegations and then just about surviving or starting so promisingly only for it all to falter come December.
In the last five-years the Irons have seen massive transformation going from Nolan, Matt Jarvis and Gary O’Neil to the likes of Payet, Lanzini and Zaza.
Many of our regular punters can see the top job the owners Gold and Sullivan have done since they took over at West Ham.
But despite the recent successes, it hasn’t been plain sailing for them over the past five seasons, and here are THREE key mistakes they have made in the past FIVE years…..
Spending £15 million on Andy Carroll
Well, we know this could cause a bit of a conflict between our West Ham punters.
The 27-year-old striker was signed permanently by Sam Allardyce from Liverpool for a fee of £15 million, which at the time was a large sum of money for a side who were in and around the bottom 6 to 8 clubs.
He has since struggled to even make over 50 appearances over the past 3 seasons due to his constant injury problems.
We here at the Transfer Tavern feel the money would have been better invested in improving the whole squad during that time, rather than chucking it all at the one player.
The big English striker is still among the highest transfers fees paid by the Hammers for a player.
Employing Avram Grant as manager
The Israel-born manager has the worse win percentage and points to game ratio of any manager at West Ham in the Premier League era.
Not the best tag to have as a manager!
He was widely criticised by many Hammers here in the Tavern during his spell at Upton Park and took the Hammers down to the Championship, before being replaced by Sam Allardyce in late 2011.
He made many questionable decisions in his time, one being to sign Pablo Berrera…… Who is that you may ask? A Mexican winger who played a grand total of 15 games in 2 seasons before leaving to go back to Mexico.
He made some very questionable decisions in mounding together a sub-par side with the likes of Wayne Bridge, Frederic Piquionne and Radoslav Kovac.
When we look back on the side he had, it’s an amazing transformation in 5 years to what West Ham now have.
Changing the club’s identity a lot in one go
This next point split our bar staff and punters a like here at the Tavern, but we feel the overall response from our Hammers faithful is they feel a lot changed at one time this season.
With the move to the London Stadium from Upton Park, as well as a new badge was a lot to take for majority of the faithful fans.
It’s still early doors at their new gaffe but many say it does not feel the same as walking down to the Boleyn Ground on a match day.
Sure we agree it’s a move in the right direction for the club but we feel the mistake made was changing the badge and stadium all at once.
A badge is a club’s identity and many people associate the hammers and castle, with the crest of West Ham and yes they left those behind, but it is a part of the club’s illustrious history.
