What should West Ham do with their six old men? Is it time for David Moyes to make a cull?

West Ham have been living in nose-bleed territory in the Premier League for a couple of seasons, and a lot of that success can be pinned on the senior pros at the club.

But as the squad transitions, and David Moyes takes an eternity to bed the new signings into the first team, it’s time for the older pros at the club to slide onto the bench or visit pastures new in the January window.

Despite a handful of new faces arriving at the club over the summer, David Moyes opted for a very West Ham 2021/22 season line-up to start the brand new 2022/23 campaign.

Manchester City unwrapped a bright and shiny Erling Haaland on the opening day, West Ham had 32-year-old Michail Antonio charging about on his own up front. The poor bugger has been doing that since pre-Covid days.

So how should the club treat the old boys in the West Ham trenches as the new troops step up to the front line?

Craig Dawson
The Ballon D’awson was the subject of much transfer speculation in the summer window, with West Ham willing to let the blood ‘n’ thunder centre-back leave the club if they could bring in a replacement. That replacement was apparently Jan Bednarek, but he got his claret and blues muddled up and found himself at Aston Villa on deadline day.

This left West Ham’s cult hero in a sort of no-man’s land.

Despite being a solid part of the West Ham defence for the last two seasons, he has only ever been a third or fourth-choice centre-back. He knows this, the club knows this, West Ham fans know this. Luckily for Dawson, West Ham have terrible luck when it comes to injuries and ‘you’ll probably get a few games this season’ became ‘you are the only fully fit defender we have’.

In the summer it was revealed Dawson had been commuting to East London from Manchester, the Midlands or somewhere in between – nobody is really sure, and I’ve lost my map to the stars’ houses. That’s a lot of Ginsters pasties at motorway service stations.

Maybe this was a PR line to make people feel sorry for him about his need to leave the club. It certainly worked. Nobody would begrudge him a move now, especially as he’s been such a revelation and never whinged about the price of fuel.

Moyes’ next move: His contract runs out in the summer. Sell him at a cut price to a Championship club like Stoke in January, as that’s between Manchester and the midlands. Then he can’t pop up and head home a corner in the last minute of a crucial end-of-season match, which consigns West…