West Ham have announced a new sponsorship deal with JD Sports, signalling the start of a busy summer of change at the club.

JD Sports will become the Hammers main sleeve sponsor, taking over from Scope Markets who held the spot over the last three years.

West Ham United’s Chief Commercial Officer, Nathan Thompson told the clubs official website: “We are proud to welcome JD Sports as our Official Sleeve Partner.

“We share the same values – a desire to be the best in our field, whilst providing exceptional customer experiences for our loyal supporter bases.”

This comes at an exciting time for the club who have just appointed Tim Steidten as Technical Director after poaching the German from Bayer Leverkusen.

The 44-year-old has overseen the Bundesliga sides impressive recruitment for the past couple of years and will now be looking to take West Ham to the next level.

Steidten has an impressive list of talented players he has brought to his clubs over the years, including the likes of Florian Wirtz, Moussa Diaby and Patrick Schick for Leverkusen and Serge Gnabry and Kevin De Bruyne for Werder Bremen.

With the sale of Declan Rice to Arsenal in its latter stages, Steidten will soon be able to get to work and will have near to £105 million to play with. Given his track record, it could be an incredibly exciting and pivotal summer for the Hammers.

With Rice leaving, a new club captain will need to be namedto fill the gap. Current vice-captain Aaron Cresswell looks like the obvious choice having been at the club for nine yearsbut there has been talk that David Moyes may want a player who is regularly on the pitch leading his side.

Nayef Aguerd, Angelo Ogbonna, Tomas Soucek and Vladimir Coufal have all been touted as potential captain material.

It is going to be a summer of mass change but there are a lot of reasons for Hammers fans to be incredibly optimistic for the season ahead.