West Ham United could lack experience and leadership after releasing four important members of the dressing room.

Lukasz Fabianski, Aaron Cresswell, Vladimir Coufal, and Danny Ings will leave the club this summer. While their contributions on the pitch probably won’t be massively missed, their contributions off the pitch certainly will be.

We thought we’d struggle without a leader when Noble left, but Declan Rice stepped up. However, since then, it has been a struggle to find someone with quite as much as those two. Kurt Zouma didn’t last because of his lack of fitness and poor performances. Jarrod Bowen is sensational, but the jury is still out on whether he can become a captain like Noble and Rice.

Cresswell, along with Fabianski being full of experience, having been at the club so long, would’ve really helped Bowen settle into the role. While Bowen has said he has developed well into the role, I struggle to see where else the leadership is going to come from, apart from Kilman and maybe Fullkrug, who too could end up leaving.

Graham Potter has a lot to do in the summer transfer window, but bringing in a real leader needs to be near the top of that list. It may be difficult to find someone, as we want to bring in younger players with potential, who naturally are not going to be leaders.

This suggests that maybe the window shouldn’t be based entirely on bringing in youngsters. If we bring in six players this summer, for example, maybe five of them should be young players with room to improve, but one should be an experienced head.

One player we have been linked with, which immediately made almost every West Ham fan say no, is Adam Webster. The Brighton defender is out of favour under Fabian Hurzeler, and he was a crucial player for Potter with the Seagulls.

If he were to sign, the 30-year-old probably wouldn’t play too many minutes and would be there for his leadership, but that brings up the question: if we do sign a player like that, why not just give Aaron Cresswell a new deal?