For the Hammers, the seventh of June 2023 will live long in the memory. That was the night that West Ham United won their first piece of major silverware since the FA Cup of 1980 and their first win in a European competition since they were victorious in the Intertoto Cup in 1999. Their 2-1 win over Fiorentina was hard-fought, both on and off the pitch, and arguably saved David Moyes’ job after a miserable Premier League campaign. For a time, it looked as though the London club might be fighting relegation, though in the end they managed to finish up in 14th, six points above the drop zone.
What helped the campaign to be a standout one was the win in Prague’s Fortuna Arena, seeing them not just take home the silverware at the expense of their Italian rivals but also qualify for the Europa League in the 2023-2024 campaign. The celebrations will have gone on long into the night for a lot of the players and fans, but for those responsible for the running of the club there were more questions than answers with their success. Having struggled in the English top-flight largely thanks to the concentration put on the European competition, will being in an even more prestigious one be a help or a hindrance?
Questions Surrounding Manager David Moyes
There is no getting away from the fact that there were question marks about the manager as the season wore on. Having really made a name for himself during his spell at Goodison Park as the Everton manager, David Moyes was hand-picked by Alex Ferguson to replace him as the Manchester United boss. He didn’t make it to the end of the season at Old Trafford, gaining some European experience at Real Sociedad before being sacked within the year. Sunderland was his next port of call, but when he got them relegated it looked as though his time in the dugout might be up.
He was appointed the West Ham manager in November 2017, managing to keep them up before leaving at the end of his six-month contract in May of 2018. He was re-appointed by the Hammers in December of the following year ands worked to establish them in the Premier League, helping them to finish sixth at the end of the 2020-2021 campaign. The 2022-2023 season was unquestionably a mixed one for him, though, thanks to the fact that West Ham went unbeaten in the Europa Conference League, winning 12 games and drawing one on their way to wining it, but struggling in the top-flight.
For some West Ham fans, that should’ve been the moment that the club shook his hand and wished him all the best. Whilst there was an obvious appreciation there for what he’d managed in Europe, there was also a sense that he wasn’t quite up to the task of taking them any further in the Premier League, with rumours throughout the season that the club was considering sacking him. At the time of writing, his position still isn’t all that solid and some would still see him sacked and someone else brought in. The biggest question around the club’s season is what Moyes takes from winning a major trophy.
The Declan Rice Hole
Declan Rice was the driving force behind the success of the Hammers during the 2022-2023 campaign. So much so, in fact, that Arsenal decided to spend more than £100 million in order to prize the club captain away from their fellow Londoners. The first thing that that does is it very obviously makes West Ham weaker than they were last season, without the talisman to drive the team on. The other thing that it does is give the club £100 million or so to reinvest, with names like Harry Maguire being linked with a move to the London Stadium in time for the start of the new season.
How West Ham get on will depend in no small part on how the club goes about spending the money and finding a replacement for Rice. As you might imagine, a quick search for West Ham transfer news is showing up all sorts of links, with the usual vultures determined to suggest that the club is going to buy X player or Y player in order to compete next season. There are plenty of examples of teams failing to spend the money received for a star player wisely, so what the Hammers do from here is going to be crucial when it comes to how they’re likely to get on during the 2023-2024 campaign.
Another European Battle?
There is no question that the top football clubs need to be in European competition if they are to operate in the upper echelons of the game. The likes of Liverpool, Manchester United and Arsenal have all spent their fair share of time outside of the Champions League in the past, suffering in the league as a result. For West Ham, qualification into the Europa League is met with much more positivity than it would be for any of those teams, but that doesn’t mean that it will be an overall net positive for the Londoners when the new season gets underway. It adds far more demand to an already demanding schedule, for starters.
In the 2022-2023 campaign, UEFA gave €465 million to teams playing in the Europa League, compared to the €1,994 million that was given to sides in the Champions League. That shows where the competition sits in their list of priorities, so it is fair to say that the financial benefit of making it into the second-tier European competition isn’t as pressing as the top table. Whilst it might be great for the fans and a positive for the players, the likelihood is that it will actually be a hindrance to a West Ham side that barely stayed in the Premier League last season and has lost its captain to a rival club.