Oldest squad in the PL – Why West Ham’s short-term spending is costing them long-term success

​

Can Potter turn it around? 

©TM/IMAGO

On Saturday, West Ham lost 2-0 to Crystal Palace at the London Stadium in a match that saw the Hammers drop to 14th in the Premier League table. However, while new manager Graham Potter would have been worried by the performance of his recently-inherited team, there are bigger issues with this club that he’ll likely have to contend with in the near future if the English tactician is to make a success of his time at West Ham. 

Such dark clouds on the horizon could certainly be hinted at with a quick glance of the squad Potter put out to take on their cross-city counterparts. Not only did West Ham’s starting XI have just one player under the age of 25, but its overall average age stood at 29.7 years of age, which happens to be the third oldest starting XI in the Premier League this season – only Everton have fielded two teams with a higher figure. 

Indeed, while some Premier League sides pride themselves on signing younger players and developing them into top-flight stars, West Ham’s strategy in recent years seems to have revolved around buying players that are at the peak of their powers and, as a result, older in profile than the kind of players their rivals typically signed. Perhaps to no great surprise for regulars at the London Stadium, Potter’s squad is the oldest in the Premier League with an average age of 28.9. And it’s not hard to see how West Ham got themselves into this current predicament. 

So far this season, the London club have signed seven senior players on permanent deals, with many of them arriving at the English club in what many would consider to be the prime of their careers. Whether it be Maximilian Kilman (27 years old), Guido Rodríguez (30), Niclas Füllkrug (31), it should come as no great surprise to find that the average age of their signings this season stands at 26.7. In stark contrast, Bournemouth – who sit seven places above West Ham in the league table – have signed nine players with an average age of just 21.8 this season. When we take an average of the age every current West Ham player was when they joined the club, it stands at 26.4. That may not sound too high, but as we can see in the table above, it’s comfortably the highest average in the entire Premier League. And almost four years older than clubs that are typically considered to be smart operators in the transfer market, like Brighton (23.0), Liverpool (26.4) and Brentford (25.1). 

This perhaps then explains why West Ham manage to spend so much money without earning a huge amount of success from it. For example, over the course of the last four and a half seasons, the London club have spent more than all but six clubs in England, but are still facing the daunting scenario of four of their 15 most used players in the league this season being over the age of 30, while key players like Jarrod Bowen (29 in June) Tomas Soucek (30 in June) are quickly approaching it too, and may be in need of expensive replacements in the years to come. And as we can see in the gallery above of West Ham’s 10 biggest signings of all time, not only have eight of the 10 signings come in the last four and a half seasons, but only two of the club’s major signings are under the age of 25.

As such, while Potter may only be concerned with how well his squad doers in the Premier League over the course of  the next four months, if West Ham are to climb back up the league table and rival some of the better run clubs in the division, they may need to take a second look at the profile of players that they’re signing and in return trade in short-term desperation for some solid long-term planning.