West Ham United capped off a solid summer transfer window with the loan signing of Igor Julio from Brighton on deadline day. 

The Hammers went into the summer transfer window with hopes of getting rid of the deadwood, making the average age of the squad younger, and bringing in more young and hungry players.

The club started the window off positively. Despite it being hard to say goodbye, we released Fabianski, Cresswell, and Vladimir Coufal. Three players who were past their best at the club, and the fans were excited about who would replace them.

El Hadji Malick Diouf became the first signing of the summer, four weeks after the transfer window re-opened after the small window before the Club World Cup. Diouf was a Graham Potter signing and gave the fans hope that the board were going to back Potter with his players.

Diouf has been an excellent signing so far, in what’s been a tricky start for the Hammers. The £19m signing has been a shining light with his brilliant crosses and great back-post defending.

However, while the fans were happy with the Diouf signing. They were not happy with what it took to get the signing done. We were being told we had to sell before we buy, and it took selling Mohammed Kudus to Tottenham Hotspur for us to start funding our window.

The £55m sale of Kudus wasn’t great, but it was necessary. Ideally, we would have got more money for a player with world-class potential, but everyone knew we wanted to sell him, so in the end, the £55m wasn’t a bad deal considering players like Anthony Elanga and Xavi Simons went on to move for similar fees.

After selling Kudus and buying Diouf, West Ham fans hoped we would use the remaining £35m on fixing the midfield, something that needed to be a priority after last season.

However, for some reason, that didn’t happen. The next two signings were free agents Kyle Walker-Peters and Callum Wilson. On paper, Kyle Walker-Peters was a smart signing, a very solid defender, tidy on the ball, and versatile – he can provide backup for both left-back and right-back.

However, the signing of Callum Wilson unsurprisingly got a lot of stick; like KWP, Wilson is a client of Will Salthouse’s agency CAA Base, a good friend of David Sullivan. We have signed a lot of his players before, but the Wilson signing just looked like he was doing his friend a favour.

However, even though he scored 0 goals for Newcastle last season, I didn’t think it was a bad signing, even though he is hated by our fanbase due to what he’s done in the past. He arrived happy, hungry to score goals, and on a heavily incentivized contract. And we’ve seen exactly that on the pitch already; there have already been calls for him to start over Niclas Fullkrug after scoring vs Forest.

After these signings, for some reason, the priority still wasn’t midfield, and we went for a goalkeeper. It looked like we were going to sign John Victor from Botafogo; however, that was used as a smokescreen to get a deal done for Mads Hermansen of Leicester City.

The Hammers were originally quoted £30m for the Danish International; however, after a lot of negotiations, we managed to get him for a fee of just over £15m. Despite what has been, at the very least, a shaky start, Hermansen will make a huge difference to the team, especially with his distribution.

After signing Hermansen, the board finally decided to focus on sorting out the midfield, after it got exposed heavily in the first two matches of the season. Just three days before the end of the transfer window, West Ham announced the signings of defensive midfielder Soungoutou Magassa from Monaco and Matheus Fernandes from Southampton.

The Hammers beat off competition from Frankfurt and Nottingham Forest to sign Magassa for a fee of just under £20 million. We finally got the defensive midfielder we’ve been calling out for for a long time.

Fernandes signed for a fee of £35 million, rising to £42 million with add-ons. This is a very large fee, however, he adds the energy, technique, and passion we’ve been missing in the centre of the park since Declan Rice left.

Deadline day was quite a busy one for the Hammers. Nayef Aguerd moved to Marseille for £20m, so we had to find a replacement. Moves were made for Charlie Cresswell and Axel Disasi; however, we ended up signing Igor Julio on loan from Brighton.

This is far from an exciting signing; however, if we do end up sticking with the back four, it will be a decent signing because he will just be the back-up left centre back to Max Kilman. But if he has to have a bigger role than that, I would start to worry, because he wasn’t very good for Brighton at all.

Overall, I am impressed with the incoming personnel; however, I just wish we had managed to get them in earlier. Hermansen was thrown in against Sunderland just days after signing and played really badly, massively denting his confidence before he’s even really got started. Also, we were forced to start the same midfield as last season for the opening two matches, and we more than paid the consequences.

The outgoings were positive too; we managed to get rid of a lot of the players we wanted to, except for Guido Rodriguez and Andy Irving. Ideally, we could have got more money from sales, for example, we could only find a deadline day loan for Maxwel Cornet, Edson Alavarez going to Fenerbache with only an option to buy, and Emerson joined Marseille for less than £1 million.

In full, we ended up having a pretty good window, just a week or so ago, the window was a disaster, but the signings of Magassa and Fernandes have taken the window to a 6,5/10 in my opinion. To improve, I would have liked us to have gotten our business done earlier, signed a better centre-back, and a young, starting quality striker.