The Cockney Boys have got a defender

West Ham have finally made our second signing of the summer in Joel Veltman on a free from Brighton. At 34 he's not one for the future, but can certainly do a job for the coming season. I've seen him score against West Ham (most players have) in the 4-0 defeat at Brighton in 2023 and Veltman is a good solid Premier League defender. He made 24 appearances for Brighton last season and helped them finish eighth and qualify for the Uefa Conference League. He's won three titles with Ajax, has 28 international caps with the Netherlands and should provide leadership and experience at the back. Veltman can play at both right-back and centre back which will provide competition to Walker-Peters, Mavropanos and Kilman.

Meanwhile Freddie Potts has gone to Bruges for £10 million. It's always sad to see an Academy player go particularly when he's the son of Steve Potts. It's a little surprising he's been let go, but the money will count as pure profit and suggests that Nuno is confident of signing Engels from Celtic. The gaffer clearly sees potential in 20-year-old Mohamadou Kante in central midfield while Magassa will hopefully thrive in a lower division and Soucek will return at some stage. James Ward-Prowse might be back in favour too. Potts will be a steady midfielder for Bruges but could have struggled for game time this season, so his departure might be good for his career.

Meanwhile Kretinsky and Amanda Staveley are locked in a two-month battle to buy WHU shares, with David Sullivan possibly deciding who gets ultimate control and becoming even richer in the process. It's not great to have even more uncertainty, but there's £155 million banked and several more signings required. Let's hope Veltman is the first of many.

Deal or no deal? Staveley overtakes Kretinsky in fight for Gold shares?

Just when West Ham needed clarity on who runs the club the news comes that Vanessa Gold has now decided to sell her shares to Amanda Staveley, influential deal-maker with the Middle East and former part-owner of Newcastle United, plus her husband the Iranian businessman Mehrdad Ghodoussi, in partnership with Ashland Forest Capital Partners, whoever they might be. In June it was announced that Gold was selling to Kretinsky to make him the majority shareholder; now Vanessa Gold says that this deal, “could not be brought to fruition”. 

Meanwhile Kretinsky’s camp state that pre-emption rights still allow him to bid for Gold’s shares. A West Ham statement says this will take two months to sort out: “The proposed transaction will now be subject to a pre-emption rights process. This provides all existing shareholders with the opportunity to acquire their proportional percentage of shares in round one, and any remaining shares in round two. This process will take approximately two months and, until it is completed, nothing will change regarding the ownership structure of the Club.”

A spokesman for Kretinsky said: "The agreement we had reached with the Gold family in June provided stability for the club at a crucial time. Today's announcement does the opposite.

Staveley is certainly an interesting character. She is the daughter of wealthy Yorkshire businessman, went to private school and dropped out of Cambridge University. She then set up a restaurant called Stocks, close to Newmarket racecourse, through which she made contacts with lots of wealthy Middle Eastern racehorse owners. 

TALK OF THE TOON

Staveley founded a failed company called Q.ton, then moved to Dubai and advised on a number of big deals including Abu Dhabi investment in Barclays, Abu Dhabi’s ownership of Manchester City and the the Saudi Arabian Public Investment Fund’s purchase of Newcastle, which was criticised for sportswashing. 

She also made a bid for Spurs and once dated Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, facts which are probably best left off her CV. With gaffs in Park Lane and Dubai she presumably won’t be eating in the Best Meze Cafe before games. She’s also been diagnosed with Huntington’s Disease, a condition made worse by stress, so West Ham might not be the wisest move.

Judging by her time at Newcastle Staveley is good at fronting a club and not a woman to be messed with. But can she work with Kretinsky if her bid is successful? Meanwhile David Sullivan is still the club’s biggest shareholder.

On the football front West Ham have had a bid for Engels knocked back by Celtic. He’s reportedly checking out the condition of the working class in Essex before deciding if he wants to move to Das Kapital. In the 1-1 draw at Magdeburg Kante looked quite strong and effective in a central midfield role and Mavropanos and Kilman did well at the back, though it’s hard to read much into these games. Meanwhile Freddie Potts looks to be on his way to Bruges. 

But most of the interesting stuff is happening off the pitch. Will the ownership battle affect the players? We have to hope not. Would Staveley try to bring in her old gaffer Eddie Howe? The last thing the club needs is two months of not knowing who is really in charge.

Massive: The Miracle of Prague by Pete May is available from Biteback Publishing, price 12.99

Summerville goes: Greek Bloke to stay?

So Jimmy Summerville has finally left us this way. Somehow the Kretinsky regime has got us cheering on selling our best players, basically because we’re getting over the odds for them. Jimmy was set to move to Roma for £50m before Al-Hilal stepped in with a £60m offer. It’s a strange career move for a 24-year-old, but perhaps the reported £1000-an-hour wages helped. That’s £145m in the bank for the club from selling Fernandes and Summerville.

Summerville had a great World Cup and a cracking last half of the season for WHU. But he is very injury-prone and missed half of his initial season with injury while taking a long time to get up to speed in 2025-26. However he very nearly kept us up and I’ll remember his fine body swerve before scoring at Fulham, plus vital goals at Spurs and Burnley. He had a good goal disallowed against Forest and was very unlucky hitting the bar against Brentford. Good luck in Saudi Jimmy, though they might not play the Communards much there.

Meanwhile Dinos Mavropanos has been offered a new contract and the chance of staying a year to hopefully take WHU up. It would be a filip to keep him, so let’s hope Kretinsky can do a Bowen and impress the Greek Bloke.

FRIENDLY FIRE

Of course players now need to be bought, though looking at the pre-season friendlies there are a lot of young players who might fancy getting games in the Championship namely Orford, Earthy, Golambeckis, Potts, Scarles, Magassa, Mayers, Kante and Marshall. Might forgotten man James Ward-Prowse be retained for his dead-balls? And could Kilman recover his confidence in the Championship? We’ve even seen Maxwel Cornet playing in the friendly at Stevenage, as viewed by Chris Packham. Nuno has to assess what we now have very carefully.

Another good thing is that now Karren Brady has departed the relationship between the club and London Stadium LLP seems to be improving. It has to with the stadium losing them £19m a year. Chair Lyn Garner has suggested painting the seats claret and blue in order to make the stadium “less sterile” and playing women’s games there which West Ham would fund and seems a good idea. Though playing more away games early on to facilitate September concerts is a non-starter.

Overall we’ve got the cash the club wanted by selling just two players, Bowen is staying and the club seems to be making progress off the field. Now the Hammers just need to sign some players.

Massive: The Miracle of Prague by Pete May is available from Biteback Publishing, price 12.99.

Jarrod Bowen's on hire

It’s a huge boost to West Ham’s promotion hopes that Jarrod Bowen is staying at the club. Even more significantly it’s a sign that Daniel Kretinsky is taking a hands-on interest in running the club after years of David Sullivan blunders. Jarrod flew to Prague to talk to Kretinsky and director Jiri Svarc and said, “the ambition that I got from them, certainly in terms of the direction the club wants to move in, it interests me a lot.” Bowen has signed a revised contract which reportedly gives him the option of leaving if West Ham don't gain promotion, so it's all down to next season.

Bowen will have been helped by the fact that wife Danni Dyer is a Hammers’ fan, as is father-in-law Danny Dyer, now a sex symbol on Rivals. Danny presumably had a few words with young Jarrod about how to be a top geezer. Interestingly Bowen mentions happiness as being one of his priorities and he’s probably concluded that one season at a mid-level Premier League club couldn't match being a lifelong hero at West Ham for showing such loyalty. His winner in Prague cemented the bond between captain and fans and Jarrod mentions he will be a fan himself when he retires — there’s a space next to us in the Billy Bonds stand if he’s interested.

JARROD MARCHES ON

Despite the lack of signings we’re seeing signs the club is finally being run properly. Fifty thousand season tickets sold is phenomenal for a relegated club. We got £20m more cash than expected for Mateus Fernandes. A new head of player recruitment has been appointed in Nils Koppen and Rui Pedro Silva has come in as Nuno’s assistant having worked with him at several previous clubs.

The best thing about Bowen staying is that it might encourage other players to remain loyal, hopefully including the Greek Bloke who scored in the friendly at Southend. Summerville will go as will Todibo and probably Wan-Bissaka, but we stand a chance of keeping most of the squad intact. A 46-game marathon is coming up and with Jarrod still an Iron the club feels a lot more united. 

Massive: The Miracle of Prague by Pete May is available from Biteback Publishing, price 12.99.

The West Ham Syndrome and my part in it

Here's some more podcast banter while we wait for West Ham to unveil a plethora of new signings. Enjoyed chatting to Max and Andrew on the West Ham Syndrome about the books what I wrote. Click on the link to sample. 

Draft includer: West Ham's greatest relegation XI

Good fun as always to appear on the Stop! Hammer Time podcast. This time we had a version of the US Draft system, with four managers — myself, Jim Grant, Steve Law and Trevor Drane — picking sides of players relegated with West Ham. The four managers took it in turns to select four really high-quality sides. Trevor Brooking went first of course, but West Ham have also managed to relegate players like Bonds, Devonshire, Martin, Di Canio, McAvennie, Carrick, Cole, Johnson, Bowen, Parkes, Dicks, Lampard Senior and many other brilliant players. Five relegations and a lot of mismanagement has gone into that achievement. Still we enjoyed doing it and to find out our selections click on the link.

Fernandes off to Spurs for £85 million

So Mateus Fernandes is leaving for Spurs for £85 million. No-one likes selling players but West Ham have got the price they wanted. A shame it’s Spurs, but this is a pretty good deal. Fernandes is a really good player, but he’s also been relegated in successive seasons and is not the finished article yet. He’s still prone to giving away dangerous free-kicks outside his own box and needs to improve his finishing, witness the chance that was saved by Raya against Arsenal. 

He’s certainly got brilliant potential and really prospered when Paqueta left and he was the main creator in the side, but I’d put his current value at about £60 million. We paid £38 million for him year ago and sold him for £85 million so that’s a tidy gain of £47 million. It’s not often West Ham make that kind of profit so let’s give poor old Graham Potter a bit of credit for signing him. 

Not all will be happy. As my pal Lisa says we should stop selling players to Spurs as they keep breaking them, as in Mo Kudus. All we can hope is that Fernandes can achieve a hat-trick of relegations with Tottenham.

Much will depend on how West Ham spend the money this summer. Jimmy Summerville is likely to go too and will get a good price following his fine World Cup. Todibo will definitely go and possibly Wan-Bissaka, though please not Jarrod Bowen. We’ve got to hope that with a new director of football appointed soon and no interference from David Sullivan, recruitment might become less scattergun. So far Disasi has returned to Chelsea, Traore has been released and the kid from Caracas Kieber Lamadrid has signed for around £1 million. 

Off the pitch things are improving. Boyle Sports is continuing with its sponsorship and the club is consulting over a new badge, a shrewd PR move after Sullivan and Brady dumped the Boleyn Castle and plonked “London” on the crest. But we now need players. It’s not long till the August kick-off and with money in the bank the Hammers have to start a serious rebuild.