00:00So James, looking at West Ham and let's sort of look ahead to the remainder of the season
00:07now obviously not a load of games to go in terms of West Ham's season with them being
00:14out of the cup competitions and no European football this time round. How do you sort
00:19of look ahead to the remainder of this season? Where can you sort of see them finishing and
00:24getting on and can you see it as sort of a positive for Graham Potter to have this bit
00:29of a trial run before really giving it a go with the full season with the side next
00:34season now? Yeah I think a lot of fans have accepted the fact that there's nothing really
00:41much to play for this season now and it's all about really like you just said there
00:46Graham Potter just having an opportunity to work with the squad that he's got, integrate
00:51Evan Ferguson into the team and get him playing, get some key players back from injury and
00:57sort of really imposing his style and his philosophy and his ideas onto this squad ahead
01:03of what we're hoping to be a decent summer of business for us to sort of get the players
01:07in ahead of next season. But you know we haven't got anything to play for. So from a fan's
01:14perspective it purely is just seeing this team develop into a Graham Potter team and
01:22if we can sort of start, we've already started seeing the signs admittedly over the last
01:26few performances and you know if we can make a push for a surprising top 10 finish then
01:33great but I think realistically we're probably looking you know between 11th and 14th is
01:39probably a realistic finish for us which you know beginning last summer there was a lot
01:44of hope that we'd maybe push for Europe. That didn't work on the Lopotegi as a result of
01:49that. It means that we had to kind of reassess our expectations but you know this is now,
01:55it was always going to be a transitional season for us given the change of manager last summer
02:00and it's still that now with a new manager in place and so it's just a case of we need
02:05to kind of just temper our expectations between now and the end of the season and just hope
02:10that you know Graham Potter can really get the team playing the way he wants them to
02:14play and like I said we've seen some good, some early positive signs so I think I said
02:20last week that you know there is a positive atmosphere around the club at the moment and
02:25then there is hope that we are now finally going in the right direction post David Moyes.
02:31Yeah obviously the summer was quite big in terms of the spending under Lopotegi. They
02:36clearly felt he was the right man to take them forward and backed him very well. Do
02:40you sort of feel there are the foundations have already been laid in terms of the sort
02:45of quality throughout the side that there are there to go and get European football
02:49again consistently. That's where obviously the club want to be and obviously after that
02:54trophy success as well and then obviously you know as we mentioned Potter's time is
02:58so crucial this season to really sort of give it a trial run and then go full front next
03:03season and really you know do you feel it could really benefit the club in terms of
03:07their long term goals?
03:10Yeah I think I've said it a number of times before that the summer that we did last year
03:15wasn't a problem really. Last summer it wasn't, the players that he brought in there are still
03:22some question marks over one or two of them but overall the business that we did wasn't
03:26that bad. It was just the fact that the manager couldn't really impose a good enough system.
03:31On paper the squad is good enough to be competing for a top eight Premier League finish and
03:36to qualify for Europe. It is you know Lucas Paquitao, Mo Kudas, Jarrod Bowen, now you've
03:41got Evan Ferguson in midfield, you've got Edson Alvarez at the back, you've got Jean-Claude
03:46Thibaud, you've got Max Killman, Aaron Wan-Bissaka, you know all players that are good enough
03:51to be playing in European competition. So it's now down to Graham Potter. The foundations
03:56are there, you're right, it's just have we got the manager to do it and I think we do
04:00have the manager to really push us on from next season onwards.
04:04And here's what boss Graham Potter had to say.
04:06I believe in the team and I believe in the club and I believe that our fans want a team.
04:12They want a team, they want a team fighting for each other, they want a team that's going
04:15in the same direction. I think that's really important for us and so therefore my pickiness
04:21is just to make sure that we get people that want to buy into that and that we can use
04:28in the right way.
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