Ranking West Ham’s 23 mostly awful signings since winning the Conference League
West Ham United have wasted hundreds of millions in the transfer market since winning the Europa Conference League two-and-a-half years ago, as this ranking brutally demonstrates.
The Hammers have dismantled their trophy-winning squad and made it exponentially worse, leaving the club deep in relegation trouble with strained finances.
As a West Ham season ticket holder, I’ve ranked all 23 first-team signings made since the summer of 2023, including loanees, from worst to best. It’s as painful as you might expect.
23. Kalvin Phillips (loan)
Sitting sixth at the start of 2024, David Sullivan sold Pablo Fornals and Said Benrahma from an already wafer-thin squad before bestowing this dubious gift on David Moyes.
Like Joe Hart before him, Phillips came to West Ham to secure his England place only to play himself out of contention with a string of disasterclass displays.
From an error leading to a Bournemouth goal within three minutes of his debut to getting sent off at Nottingham Forest and giving fans the middle finger at Newcastle, both parties agreed to pretend this transfer never happened.
22. Maximilian Kilman
Weak, ineffectual and manages to shrink under pressure, Kilman is the latter-day Matthew Upson in the heart of the Hammers’ defence.
Spending £40million and giving a 27-year-old a seven-year contract will prove to be a millstone around the club’s neck if West Ham fall into the Championship.
Both Julen Lopetegui and the departed technical director Tim Steidten can share the culpability.
21. Jean-Clair Todibo
Once linked with Manchester United and Juventus, Todibo’s form in a West Ham shirt wouldn’t be enough to interest Dagenham & Redbridge.
A defender with a big reputation has offered nothing besides laziness, a lack of commitment to anything except falling out with management and an allergy to getting his shorts muddied.
His arrival was an initial loan deal with a £35million obligation, one that the club apparently were desperate to break.
West Ham used to have big-hearted, stalwart defenders like Kurt Zouma, Angelo Ogbonna, James Collins, Craig Dawson and Winston Reid in their backline.
Todibo and Kilman, for a combined £75million, have the spine of a shallow puddle. There’s one reason for their decline.
20. James Ward-Prowse
With £100million of Declan Rice money in the bank, West Ham spent over £30million on Ward-Prowse in a decision that proves they’re a club where the lunatics run the asylum.
Fresh from captaining Southampton to relegation, the midfielder started well enough but quickly became ineffectual and a poster boy for the beige Potter era.
Ward-Prowse is passable at recycling possession, but offers none of the dynamism lacking since Rice’s departure or the physicality needed to be competitive in the top flight in 2025.
Tellingly, the second-highest free-kick scorer in Premier League history hasn’t scored a single one for West Ham. That might be the most West Ham stat ever.
19. Guido Rodriguez
Why?
18. Evan Ferguson (loan)
Bought in on loan by Graham Potter to kickstart his career, Ferguson was benched by his former boss and failed to score in a Hammers shirt. Pointless.
17. Niclas Fullkrug
A classic West Ham signing in that he was overpriced, arrived three years too late and quickly became injured.
It must have been a culture shock for Fullkrug, who led the line for Dortmund at the brilliant Westfalenstadion, to be outplayed by 12-point Southampton at the vast and soulless London Stadium.
His post-match rant after that game was his most memorable moment in a Hammers shirt to date. Otherwise, it’s three goals and £27million wasted.
16. Mads Hermansen
West Ham were crying out for several dynamic midfielders, a commanding centre-back and a striker not in possession of a free bus pass in the summer of 2025.
Naturally, they signed a goalkeeper for £18million and threw him into the starting XI days after his arrival with no pre-season training instead.
Hermansen was at fault for two Sunderland goals on his debut, before offering less resistance than wet tissue paper in heavy defeats by Chelsea and Spurs.
He was dropped by Potter, who apparently pushed for his signing, in just the fifth game of the season and is now firmly second-choice under Nuno Espirito Santo.
15. Igor Julio (loan)
Julio is yet to make an appearance after his loan move from Brighton, but his signing exposes Sullivan’s lack of long-term vision in the transfer market.
His Deadline Day move was simply because he was available. Nobody else in the Premier League operates like this anymore.
14. Andy Irving
One of my favourite moments of last season was being in the away end at Stamford Bridge, serenading Irving as he bossed Chelsea’s superstar midfield (for 45 minutes).
Irving is not an academy graduate or a book-balancing signing from a feeder club, just a random buy without fanfare from Austria Klagenfurt.
He’s 25, somehow. But flew under the radar of every West Ham fan until ascending to cult hero status on a cold February night in west London.
The truth is that Irving is tidy enough, but without the physicality needed in the Premier League. He’d be a good Championship or non-Old Firm Scottish Premiership player.
13. Wes Foderingham
Quota-filling backup goalkeeper who made zero appearances before jetting off to Cyprus?
Fair play, Wes. You’ve cracked the code of life.
12. Carlos Soler (loan)
Soler came, scored precisely one goal, offered little else and left unmourned by anybody who saw him play in a Hammers shirt.
His loan spell at West Ham last season is already a psychedelic dream, a figment of a feverish imagination. Did he really make 33 appearances?
11. Soungoutou Magassa
Magassa is 21, French, and a defensive midfielder who puts himself about. Everything West Ham were crying out for in the summer.
He’d be a typical Bournemouth/Brentford/Brighton signing who turns out to be excellent and gets sold for a hefty profit.
The jury is out at West Ham as he’s only made one start to date. Here’s hoping the Gen X Kouyate.
10. Luis Guilherme
Guilherme was a proper ‘Brighton-esque’ signing, but spending £25million on a Brazilian teenager and rarely playing him is foolhardy for a club of West Ham’s stature.
Indeed, Guilherme has shown promise in the odd cameo and wouldn’t be short of suitors if West Ham ever decided to cash in.
But his signing is an emblem of a club uncertain of who it is, what approach to take and lacking the dedication to follow a chosen path with any conviction.
9. Konstantinos Mavropanos
Signed by David Moyes in 2023, Mavropanos became a fan scapegoat before Kilman and Todibo made him look like the Greek Beckenbauer.
The centre-back is still flawed, but clears the low bar of actually looking like he wants to do some defending.
I’ve always thought Mavropanos got more stick than he deserved, like a Tzatziki Maguire, and have been pleased with his cautious improvement in recent months.
8. Callum Wilson
Free, old, injury prone and a client of Will Salthouse, an agent with Sullivan’s ear? Wilson was the most predictable of West Ham signings and that’s not a compliment.
Expectations were south of the Earth’s crust, which made his goalscoring cameo during the win at Forest a pleasant surprise.
The catch? Wilson is on a significant bonus every time he plays and hasn’t come off the bench in the Nuno era.
West Ham need goals and relegation will cost hundreds of millions. It’s probably worth giving a striker who was in England’s last World Cup squad a go.
QUIZ: Can you name every forward West Ham have signed under David Sullivan?
7. Edson Alvarez
Alvarez wasn’t without his qualities, but undermined all of them by becoming a walking yellow card.
Some of his tackles were spicier than a rogue Jalepeno, compensating for a startling lack of pace that always had him on the back foot.
Signed from Ajax, the Mexico international was one of several players lured to the London Stadium by the promise of European football.
Like several other players on this list, Alvarez was not suited to the rough and tumble of Premier League football. He is now on loan at Fenerbahce.
6. Kyle Walker-Peters
Look, Walker-Peters was free and has looked competent in his eight appearances so far. It’s almost worthy of a Stratford street parade these days.
5. Mateus Fernandes
A solid debut aside, Fernandes has made little impression so far since his £42million move from Southampton.
But there are reasons why I’ve ranked him fifth here, beyond the paucity of the other options; he’s dynamic, good on the ball and would benefit from a settled midfield around him.
Also, he’s one of the few West Ham players who could be sold for a significant fee in the event of relegation.
It’s hard to imagine the Hammers staying up without an integrated Fernandes at the heart of the team.
4. Crysencio Summerville
Watching Summerville tear through the Nottingham Forest defence in August after eight months injured was like stumbling across an oasis in the Sahara Desert.
Signed for £25million after winning the Championship Player of the Year at Leeds, the winger has endured a stop-start Hammers career to date.
But in an increasingly stop-start league, his dribbling and pace offer something genuinely different. Add a few more goals and Summerville might be the full package.
3. Aaron Wan-Bissaka
West Ham full-backs have a worrying habit of following up a brilliant debut season by forgetting how to play the sport altogether.
Wan-Bissaka is in danger of emulating Sebastian Schemmel, Herita Ilunga and Carl Jenkinson’s ignominious trajectory in east London.
For now, he remains in credit for several barnstorming performances and winning the Hammer of the Year award in 2025.
2. El Hadji Malick Diouf
Signed from Slavia Prague for £19million, Diouf has been brilliant and will avoid the full-back second-season syndrome as one of the Big Six will buy him next summer.
His left-footed crosses are more accurate than GPS and deadlier than a First World War howitzer.
Proof that this broken clock of a football club gets it right occasionally.
West Ham getting Diouf pic.twitter.com/5fDh3LXOuf
— Mohamed (@MoeSquare) September 29, 2025
1. Mohammed Kudus
Even after downing tools in his second season, an infuriating inability to pass and forcing a move to Tottenham, Kudus is still the best signing West Ham have made in recent years.
Picked up from Ajax for £37million in 2023, the Ghanaian scored 14 goals in his debut season including a solo effort against Freiburg that was nominated for the Puskas Award.
He clearly got disillusioned with life at West Ham after Moyes left, choosing the Jermain Defoe method of getting himself sent off to make his point.
Getting £55million for Kudus represented a rare profit in the transfer market. West Ham could do worse than embrace their place in the food chain and do more deals like this.
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