West Ham have signed Callum Wilson, and it has led to a complete meltdown within the Hammers fanbase.
The Hammers announced the signing of Callum Wilson on a one-year contract yesterday afternoon, and the fans are not happy.
Fans are unhappy with the signing for several reasons: his age, injury history, poor form last season, and his attitude towards West Ham in the past. But personally, I believe there has been a huge overreaction, and it isn’t as bad a signing as people are making out.
If you are upset about the signing because of his age and injury history, that is fair enough. We have been told since the start of the summer that Graham Potter wanted to sign young and hungry players this summer to decrease the average age of the squad. This goes completely against that.
Also, Wilson has always had injury problems since he arrived in the Premier League with Bournemouth. And that was no different last season; he missed a massive 29 matches for Newcastle with back and hamstring injuries.
This is exactly why the club has put him on a heavily incentive-based contract; reports suggest his contract is 90% based on performance-related bonuses. So, if he doesn’t play, he will only get paid his very low basic salary, which kind of cancels out the problem of him being injury-prone.
Wilson scoring 0 goals in 18 appearances in the League last season obviously isn’t a good thing. However, when you apply context to it, it really isn’t that bad. Wilson only featured for a total of 357 minutes in the Premier League last season. He only started two matches away at Arsenal and Liverpool, while the rest of his appearances came as short substitute cameos. So it’s completely understandable why he wasn’t able to find the back of the net. He did score one goal last season in the FA Cup.
But the fans who are writing him off and saying he’s not welcome because of what’s happened in the past between him and the club are ridiculous. We all know how good he has been against us in the past, scoring 12 goals in 14 appearances against us.
However, fans are bringing up his iconic ‘touch of magic’ quote from Boxing Day 2017. The England International scored a last-minute equaliser with his hand in a 3-3 draw and went on to call it a ‘touch of magic’ in his post-match interview.
There is also an old clip going around of Wilson on the ‘Footballers Football Podcast’, with Michail Antonio of him criticising the Europa Conference League and saying ‘enjoy the championship’ next season, while we were struggling. But we want footballers to show personality. Wilson was just trying to wind up one of his best friends, and he joked about his team to do that.
In my opinion, these are exactly the type of characters we should be looking for at the club, and would fit in very well with our current squad. On the signing, Potter said: “We are pleased to welcome Callum to West Ham. He is a proven Premier League striker with a great work ethic. and a fantastic goalscoring record. We have built a really good spirit and environment around the squad, and Callum will only strengthen that.”
Understandably, West Ham fans have not particularly been fans of him after both of these, especially because he continued to score against us in almost every game after. However, now he is a Hemmer, it’s time to get behind him and hope he can cancel out the 12 goals he’s scored against us by scoring that many for us this season. Twelve goals is what Wilson needs to get in the Premier League 100 club.
He has spoken of his desire to reach this in his first interview as a West Ham United player. This shows how hungry he will be to keep fit and score goals in a West Ham shirt. I get it’s an underwhelming signing, but to hate on him before he’s even kicked a ball for us is wrong, especially while the vibes within the squad are so positive at the moment.
