December 16, 2009

For a number of years West Ham have laid claim to the title of ‘The Academy of English Football’, presumably because they have a rich tradition of supplying players for the national team. Whether this claim is valid or not is a separate argument and one which we won’t be trying to solve with this experiment. No, what we will be trying to judge is whether England’s current crop of internationals, a number of them ex-West Ham players, can emulate the class of ’66 and beat Johnny Foreigner on English turf. However, we’ll be expecting them to do so over the marathon course of Premier League seasons rather than the relatively short sprint of a World Cup. We’ll also be looking at which of the current big-4 clubs (plus the likes of Aston Villa, Tottenham and Man City), who provide the bulk of this new look West Ham squad, will fair best with their weakened squads. Then there’s the matter of the England team, who will be the new national team manager and will they select our West Ham based stars? Will they be able to perform better than in the past with the bulk of their squad playing together on a weekly basis?

How will we achieve these aims? Well, thanks to our database ‘expert’ we have edited 30 of England’s finest players (all used by Capello since he became England’s top man) into the West Ham squad and handed Fabio himself the manager’s job. The 09/10 West Ham squad has been distributed to each of the clubs who have contributed an English player to the cause with the nearest possible positional match to ensure the balance of their squads remain as unchanged as possible. We’ve also given the Hammers a bit of a financial boost, after all the likes of Terry, Lampard, Beckham and Rooney earn a little more than players like Davenport, Quashie, Boa Morte and Ashton who they are replacing. They’ve also had a small reputation boost to ensure that the new look squad doesn’t decide the club is too small and demand to move on before our experiment has a chance to show any results. Hopefully the experiment will play out for five seasons or more depending on whether West Ham maintain their international class English bias.

Without further ado, please welcome your West Ham 2009/10 squad…

As you can see the talent is certainly there, as is the desire to win with many of the players having tasted Premier League, FA Cup and in the case of a few, Champions League success. You might also notice that loan signing Luis Jimenez is still present in the squad and that he’s obviously not English. Apparently he wasn’t showing in the database as being at West Ham and as such our ‘expert’ missed him when moving players. You might also notice that there are only 29 English players showing in the squad. This is because Capello has immediately relegated Emile Heskey to the reserve squad - FM’s Capello appears not to rate him as highly as his real life counterpart. Another oddity is Beckham’s status which shows as ‘Listed’ with the player himself unhappy at being brought to the club ‘under false pretences’ - Maybe events from their time together in Madrid reared their head? The early days of the experiment also threw a bit of a surprise into the mix as reports filtered through that a takeover was in progress. No names were mentioned - will this be a positive influence at the club or will it serve to unsettle our high maintenance stars?

The FA wasted no time at all in replacing Fabio as manager, it took them just two days to make their announcement, though to be fair it was blatantly obvious who would get the job after day one’s news items were released. Despite a piece suggesting that Paul Jewell, Victor Fernandez (who?), Mané (ditto) and fans’ favourite Alan Shearer were all in the running for the job, the more telling news item revealed that Del Boy Trotter, sorry Harry Redknapp, had left his post as Tottenham manager. Suspicion was confirmed the following day…

All that remains now is to actually begin the experiment, but before we do let’s take a quick look at West Ham’s opening fixtures and predict how we think they might start the season. The opening day sees them host Chelsea in what may be a good indicator of how they will fare in the season ahead. The next eight fixtures are then all winnable and the club should look to take as close to 20 points as possible from them, anything less would be disappointing given the talent at the club’s disposal. Furthermore failing to improve on the club’s predicted finishing position of 9th would surely be a failure given the quality of the squad. Should we also be concerned with how the club’s takeover progresses - Are they more likely to become cash rich or asset stripped?

As for England, they face Holland and Slovenia in friendlies before completing the World Cup Qualifying process against Croatia, Ukraine and Belarus. Will our Hammers players continue to be picked given that almost half of them are unlikely to be anything more than bit part players in the Premier League? Will Harry succeed at the higher level, especially given he can no longer wheel and deal? Find out in the next edition of FM-Britain Investigates!