West Ham can find value close to home with Ebere Eze interest

What's the Premier League manifestation of the Groundhog Day experience?

There are some good shouts, but consider this one: being a West Ham United fan. Every summer, the Hammers enter the season with designs on a place in the top 10; they suffer a bad run, which may or may not result in a managerial change; they right themselves in time to escape relegation; and then it begins again.

Much of the initial optimism is of course founded on the club's transfer activity. At the start of 2019/20, West Ham spent €89 million on reinforcements, the bulk of which was plowed into handsome transfer fees for striker Sebastian Haller and winger Pablo Fornals from Villarreal.

The expectation was that Franco-Ivorian forward Haller, who had been a part of a terrifying attacking triumvirate at Eintracht Frankfurt (alongside Ante Rebic and Luka Jovic) would finally provide much-needed cutting edge upfront for the Hammers.

Likewise, Fornals would bring guile and invention between the lines. There is a pattern here: exciting attacking players signed for eye-watering amounts from abroad as a means for the club to bridge the gap to the upper reaches of the Premier League table.

The trouble for West Ham is that, for the second season running, this idea has not borne fruit.

In 2018/19, close to €60m was spent on Felipe Anderson and Andriy Yarmolenko; both have had memorable moments in claret but neither is a starter for the club two years on. This season, the duo of Haller and Fornals have been upstaged by Michail Antonio and Jarrod Bowen.

Antonio, a 30-year-old battler who began his career at non-league level and has occasionally featured wide and at full-back, is enjoying his best goalscoring season as the arrowhead of the Hammers' attack.

At the risk of delving into cliché, his hunger and desire contrast favourably with Haller's more introverted style, as there is a sense that whereas the Frenchman seemed to need the team to play to his strengths, Antonio is happy enough to simply give the team what it needs.

The same is true of Bowen, who joined in January from Championship Hull in a €20m move, and has been an absolute standout with his inswinging deliveries from the right flank and his wand of a left foot.

There is a lesson here: there is something to be said for a less exotic transfer strategy, and some value in looking closer to home in terms of improving the squad. Sure enough, neither Antonio nor Bowen has been part of a European push in Serie A, the Bundesliga or La Liga, but perhaps that sort of experience is not exactly relevant to West Ham and what they are.

The good news is that it seems they might finally be learning this lesson.

The clearest indication of this is their pursuit of midfielder Ebere Eze. Per the latest reports, the Hammers are favourite to sign the Queens Park Rangers player ahead of fellow London club Crystal Palace.

Manager David Moyes is a huge fan, and is believed to have watched Eze in the Rs' 4-3 win over Millwall at the weekend. If so, he will have come away mightily pleased: the England youth international scored his side's third, and demonstrated the most talked-about aspect of his game – his creativity and flair – by playing three key passes and completing four out of seven dribbles.

Eze has been one of the stars of the Championship this term, shining even amid QPR's frustrating inconsistency. He leads the team in goals and assists (13 and eight respectively), as well as in overall big chances created: 13.

The profile is strikingly similar to Bowen's, who at the midway point of the season had 16 goals and seven assists for a struggling Hull. Both are players clearly too good for the second tier, and it is in this pond that West Ham should consistently be fishing.

Eze would bring skills the club has so far lacked. A lack of proper creativity from central areas has meant an overt reliance on crossing. In recent games, Moyes has even taken to playing Mark Noble as the farthest forward midfielder, and while the 33-year-old got an assist and looked sharp against a hapless Norwich, it is hardly a sustainable long-term play.

Adding Eze into the mix would immediately make West Ham a more dangerous, unpredictable proposition: he has both the ability to play slide-rule through balls against team's that sit deep, and his penchant for carrying the ball over long distances would aid the side's transitions against the bigger sides. Also crucially, he is a masterful dribbler: only Ovie Ejaria betters his three successful dribbles per game.

All elements West Ham could do with; all available on their doorstep. In order to finally find the upward mobility they crave every summer, the Hammers must let their transfer policy be dictated, not by glamour and ambition, but by value.

Eze lacks the profile of some of the players the club have brought in for sizeable fees, and he will not be arriving on the back of a Europa League finish in one of the other top five European leagues. Sometimes though, value is closer to home than it at first appears.