West Ham manager Graham Potter has finally got his first signing of the summer as El Hadji Malick Diouf arrives from Slavia Prague. 

West Ham fans were being told we have to sell before we buy, and that seemed to be true, pretty much as soon as Mohammed Kudus was sold to Tottenham Hotspur, Diouf became a West Ham player for £19m.

On the signing, Graham Potter said: “We are very pleased to welcome El Hadji Malick to West Ham United. He is a young player we have been watching for some time, and somebody that we believe can be a really good fit for what we are trying to build at the Club.

“He has shown tremendous strength of character and maturity at such a young age, leaving his home in Senegal to move to Norway at 18, and then moving on to Prague – and his performances have been at a consistently high level for some time now.

“He has made some terrific progress so far with his clubs and with the Senegal national team, and we are looking forward to welcoming him into the squad and working with him to continue that progress.

“The Premier League will be a big challenge for El Hadji Malick, but I can tell that he is really excited by it and determined to make a good impact at the Club and on our supporters. He is young, hungry, and ambitious, and I think he will be a very positive addition to the group.”

Diouf is exactly the type of player many West Ham fans expected us to target this summer, young, hungry, and unknown, a lot like the type of player he and Kyle Macauley signed at Brighton. We obviously have a good history of buying from Slavia Prague, let’s hope they can be nearly as good as Vladimir Coufal and Tomas Soucek were in East London.