West Ham’s summer plans are taking shape, with Graham Potter focused on fine-tuning his squad rather than making drastic changes. Targeted signings and tactical adjustments will be key as the Hammers aim to build on their current foundation and push for greater consistency next season.
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00:00Now the building blocks are in place for a strong summer for Graham Potter as he continues
00:08to shape his squad for the upcoming season. After a challenging period, Potter is focused
00:14on strengthening key areas of the team and creating a more balanced competitive unit.
00:20With several promising signings and tactical adjustments already taking shape, there's
00:25optimism around his plans for the future. To get a clearer picture of what lies ahead,
00:31we spoke to James Jones of London World, who offers expert insight into how Potter is preparing
00:37for a pivotal summer with West Ham.
00:42James, dead rubber sort of comes to mind when you look at West Ham's season now petering
00:47out a bit. Obviously, you know, that can be tough for the fans to sort of, you know, stay
00:51motivated, the players to maybe look at things and that they've sort of got one foot on the
00:56beach, as they say. In terms of the summer, I mean, it is still positive for the likes
01:01of West Ham. I mean, you look around them as well, the likes of Everton as well, going
01:05there, their rebuild, there is still positives despite seasons possibly, you know, looking
01:10at the bigger picture and, you know, being over, they're not going to go down or very
01:14unlikely, of course. And, you know, they're going to remain in the Premier League, but
01:19they've got a real foundation to go and build this summer. Is it sort of a case of just
01:24continue to learn a few things for Potter and learn about his side, learn about, you
01:29know, being part of this club and then going really, you know, feet first, you know, flying
01:34into the new season after the summer and, you know, really giving it his all to try
01:38and get West Ham right back up to those European places?
01:42Yeah, I think most West Ham fans will agree with me when I say that, you know, between
01:48now and the end of the season, there's really not a lot to get excited about other than
01:53kind of watching how this team progresses and develops under Graham Potter in those
01:57early stages. You know, we're going into the game at the weekend against Everton and aside
02:02from the fact that we're coming up against a very successful manager in David Moyes,
02:07there was nothing really to get anyone up for it, really. It was kind of like, you know,
02:11if we lose this, it's what it is. If we win that, great, but kind of we're not going to
02:15go down and we're not going to finish in the top 10. So we're kind of competing for
02:19three or four, maybe three places in that bottom half of the table. I think even, you
02:24know, over the next, you know, if we don't get a result in the next couple of weeks,
02:27maybe even 12th might be beyond our reach. So yeah, it's a tough one for West Ham fans
02:32to get excited about and admittedly, like you just said, for even sometimes even the
02:36players, but I think, you know, what we can look forward to is just seeing how this team
02:42develops. We've seen it develop so much and improve so much over the last, what, two and
02:45a half months since Potter arrived that, you know, it does feel like now we're beginning
02:51to see a proper football team with proper tactics, learning under a new manager and
02:57yeah, you're right, we get into the summer and it's actually quite an exciting summer
03:00for West Ham because so far we've liked what we've seen. Yes, like I said before, it hasn't
03:07been perfect, but we've liked the early stages of that and now it's really exciting to see
03:11what Potter does in the transfer window with the Scouting team, which areas of the squad
03:17he identifies as areas that need strengthening and are the priorities and, you know, how
03:24we go into next season. I think it's difficult to also put an ambition on what we should
03:29be doing next season. Where we'd like to be, yes, it should be, you know, qualified, well
03:33now competing for qualification for Europe and being ever present in that top 10 and
03:39being in and amongst it all season. But given how far and how quickly we've regressed from
03:44being there before, it's difficult to go, it would be difficult to go, yes, no, we should
03:50be there again next season. On paper, yes, we should, but we have to kind of give Gary
03:54Graham Potter a little bit of time, a little bit of grace in terms of there's a lot to
03:59be done. There's a few players out of contracts, there's a lot of business to be done in the
04:03summer and then once he's got those players in, he's got to get them working as well to
04:07how he wants. So it won't happen overnight, but it is exciting going into the summer,
04:14kind of wondering what direction we're going to go in and what direction Graham Potter
04:18is thinking about taking us in. But I think a lot of us can be confident that it's going
04:22to be in a good direction, but there has to be an immediate improvement on what we're
04:27seeing now because yes, okay, we're getting some good results, but you need to score more
04:32than one goal a game to win football matches sometimes. And especially if you're conceding
04:36the odd one and at the moment we're not quite managing that. So yeah, it's going to be
04:41interesting to see what happens in the summer in that respect.