Arsenal laughing as West Ham overcook Rice and have too many chefs in their own transfer kitchen

West Ham had months to prepare for Declan Rice’s departure and long enough to enact that plan already. But Arsenal will be laughing at their predicament.

The reviews are in: the continental dish was a welcome surprise but the Rice was overcooked and took an age, with too many chefs spoiling the subsequent transfer broth.

It has left West Ham with a sour taste as one of only two Premier League clubs yet to make a first-team signing this summer. And Fulham at least have the excuse of focusing on convincing Willian to stay, while fending off Saudi interest in their manager and talisman striker.

The Hammers have no such thing. Not really. David Moyes did have a little dig at Arsenal over the interminable Declan Rice delays, saying three days before the deal was completed that “until it’s done we can’t plan anything really”. But that was tantamount to ignoring weather forecasts and the ominous dark clouds above before complaining about being caught in a thunderstorm.

Planning was the only thing West Ham could do while they waited and tutted over payment structures. This was supposed to be when they put it all into action, moved on and looked forward.

West Ham knew this was coming. The £100m windfall might have only just been officially secured but the fee was agreed with Arsenal almost a month ago and Rice’s departure was inevitable long before. It somehow seems to have taken them entirely by surprise that they have money burning a hole in their pocket as big as the chasm their erstwhile captain has left.

It is, of course, not at all easy to navigate this sort of situation. West Ham are trying to play transfer poker with their cards face up on the table in plain sight. Everyone knows their budget has swollen and so clubs will inflate their asking prices. Joao Palhinha was supposedly valued by Fulham at £40m when interest in him started to simmer in March; West Ham have had an offer of £45m for the Portuguese midfielder rejected by July, with speculation that it would take twice as much to sign him.

Arsenal must be taking immense paperwork-related pleasure in watching West Ham be accused of lowballing bids for players whose price tags they know full well, considering just how obstinate the Hammers justifiably were when sat across that side of the negotiating table.

Almost never have the proceeds from the biggest Premier League sales been spent wisely. Aston Villa’s post-Grealish ‘strategy’; Tottenham’s Magnificent Seven after Bale; Man Utd replacing Ronaldo with Antonio Valencia, Michael Owen, Gabriel Obertan and Mame Biram Diouf – hitting the jackpot is a curse far more often than not.

Liverpool were the exception when reinvesting their Philippe Coutinho fortune but even they had to experience the disaster of the Luis Suarez summer first.

READ MORE: How the biggest Premier League transfer windfalls were spent

But West Ham are threatening to make Everton look competent for using their Romelu Lukaku funds to sign a load of No.10 creators to supply a striker they no longer owned. That at least represented an idea and suggested some sort of method, however mad. The Hammers have shown nothing with the season little over three weeks away.

The appointment of Tim Steidten as technical director was designed to avoid this very scenario, yet it may have only added to the issue. West Ham stated that the German, after his successful work with Werder Bremen and Bayer Leverkusen, would ‘be responsible for the club’s overarching player recruitment strategy and scouting department,’ while ‘working closely with manager David Moyes and sporting director Mark Noble’.

Throw in co-owner David Sullivan, sufficiently haunted by the transfer ethos of Slaven Bilic to take more of a hands-on approach in the market ever since, and there are at least four high-profile individuals singing from different hymn sheets.

According to a club insider, future incoming transfers at West Ham will be by mutual agreement, with Tim Steidten, David Moyes, Mark Noble and David Sullivan all having some input pic.twitter.com/3uYreLeGSk

— West Ham Football (@westhamfootball) July 3, 2023

Moyes wants proven – and ultimately very expensive – Premier League experience, players like Palhinha, Harry Maguire, Kalvin Phillips, James Ward-Prowse and Amadou Onana. Steidten would rather find value in those based further afield, such as Leon Goretzka, Jonathan Tah, Habib Diallo and Matheus Franca. Noble and Sullivan will stand somewhere in between, with the latter presumably favouring any moves for bigger names regardless of actual suitability.

To read a list of reported West Ham targets is to see a scattergun approach in action, and a lack of coherent, unified thought. Moyes swears by scouting; Steidten is more data-led. Neither approach is necessarily right or wrong, but trying to take both so rigidly at the same time instead of trying to integrate them properly is foolish.

The cracks are already visible when taking more than a cursory glance. Jordan Miles, head of recruitment analysis at the London Stadium for five years, and the person responsible for recommending the signing of Tomas Soucek in January 2020, has left for Aberdeen. Head of recruitment Rob Newman has had his authority diminished, if not rendered entirely obsolete.

The Guardian’s Jacob Steinberg – whose connections to Moyes are unimpeachable – has said that while West Ham started the summer with Harvey Barnes on their shortlist, ‘changes in their recruitment team since the end of last season resulted in them failing to submit a bid’.

In another story, Steinberg added that Steidten ‘is driving the interest in’ Monaco midfielder Youssouf Fofana and Chelsea left-back Ian Maatsen, and it does not require a significant leap to imagine Moyes becoming increasingly frustrated with the input.

The Scot made no attempt to hide his preferences last season. “I think to bring any player into the Premier League can take time,” he said in April, a familiar refrain from a manager who spent longer than he would want waiting for Nayef Aguerd, Thilo Kehrer, Lucas Paqueta and particularly Gianluca Scamacca to acclimatise to the change and challenge.

READ MORE: Newcastle and Everton make ‘concrete offer’ for Chelsea star Tottenham, West Ham want

“I think you need to give people a bit of time in the league and I think the level and the intensity can catch people out,” added a man who pointedly said upon the January capture of Danny Ings that: “We need someone who knows the league. I wanted to bring in someone who wasn’t a risk.”

Combined with Moyes’ previous comments on working with a sporting director – which can be crudely boiled down to “ultimately what I would suggest is that the manager would always have the final say” – and it is not difficult to see agendas potentially competing against one another in the West Ham background.

Armed with a European trophy, £100m, an overhauled transfer structure and eternally grand ambitions, this was supposed to be the first chapter of West Ham’s brave new era. That it has turned out to be a recipe for disaster so far is typically crushing.