The building blocks are in place for a strong summer for Graham Potter as he continues to shape his squad for the upcoming season.
To get a clearer picture of what lies ahead, we spoke to James Jones of LondonWorld, who offers expert insight into how Potter is preparing for a pivotal summer and what fans can expect as the team looks to make strides forward.
To get a clearer picture of what lies ahead, we spoke to James Jones of LondonWorld, who offers expert insight into how Potter is preparing for a pivotal summer and what fans can expect as the team looks to make strides forward.
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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.