EVAN FERGUSON’S LOAN stint at West Ham is beginning to look like an episode of false promise.
Ferguson joined on loan on 3 February and had to wait until last Tuesday, 1 April, for his first start. It didn’t last long: Ferguson was hooked at half-time as part of a double substitution as West Ham slumped to a 1-0 defeat away to Wolves.
It was Ferguson’s sixth appearance for West Ham, though he has yet to play more than 45 minutes across any of them. He has also yet to score, and fluffed his lines against Wolves in failing to convert Jarrod Bowen’s driven cross from inside the box.
On the eve of the game, West Ham manager Graham Potter leapt to Ferguson’s defence, saying criticism of him has been has been “unfair.”
A day later, Potter benched him, criticised his miss, and lavished praise on his replacement, Niclas Fullkrug. A reminder that football’s only loyalty is to volatility.
“We had a really good chance, a big chance and we didn’t take that one and then they got into the game,” said Potter. “[Fullkrug was] really good. You can see what he brings to the team. We can go long into him, he picks up second balls, a threat in the box.”
Those characteristics might also have been used to describe Ferguson. Alas.
Instead this loan move looks like it will disappoint. Ferguson was signed at a time West Ham were without a recognised striker, as Fullkrug was injured and Michail Antonio recovering from his horror car crash.
And yet in that time Ferguson failed to make a dent in West Ham’s starting team. Potter initially preferred to start Bowen as a makeshift striker and now the revered Fullkrug is fit again. It thus looks more likely now that Ferguson returns to Brighton at the end of the season, rather than moving to West Ham on a permanent basis.
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This is a season of stalled progress for Ferguson, as he simply hasn’t played enough football. Ferguson has totalled just 386 minutes across 19 Premier League appearances this season, an average of only 20 minutes per game. He has made just three Premier League starts and last completed 90 minutes in the Premier League 13 months ago, against Fulham on 2 March last year.
In fact, Ferguson has played marginally more minutes across eight games for Ireland (391 minutes) than he has in the Premier League thus far.
Injuries are the main reason things have stalled. They struck on the best day of Ferguson’s fledgling career yet: as he completed a hat-trick against Newcastle in September 2023, he picked up a knee problem that then forced him out of Ireland’s Euro 2024 qualifiers against Netherlands and France. To his credit, Ferguson flew over to Dublin to be assessed by the FAI staff and officially ruled out, and was then put under some pressure by his former manager Roberto de Zerbi to return to action as quickly as possible.
He did return, but his season then ended in March when he required ankle ligament surgery to emphatically address a niggling problem.
The severity of the injury has not been properly acknowledged: it took him out of action for six months and left him playing catch-up at the start of this season, having missed out on pre-season.
In the meantime, de Zerbi left and was replaced by Fabian Hurzeler, and all of a sudden Brighton became a club of brutal competition. No club had a larger declared net spend in world football than Brighton last summer.
Back when he was defending Ferguson, Potter explained that he wasn’t yet fit enough to make an instant impact for his new club.
“You have to see the context of where he was, in terms of the minutes he’s played previously, how he was on his return from injury,” said Potter.
“We got him at that really early stage of that return to play stage, so to think that you can just walk in to a Premier League team and just hit the ground running and playing is difficult, but he’s come on, he’s helped us.”
It would appear that Ferguson is caught in a vicious cycle in the elite end of the sport: he can’t get fully fit without playing regularly, but he can’t play regularly without getting fully fit.
The best means of addressing that is to find the highest level at which he will be given the time to build fitness by playing regularly. The West Ham experience has shown that may have to be at a lower level than the Premier League, where even a manager as familiar to Ferguson as Potter is not able to look beyond the short-term pressure to pick up points.
Ferguson’s international team-mate Troy Parrott is proof of the reinvigorating possibilities of a stint as a bigger fish in a smaller European pond, while stepping down to the Championship is another option.
Harry Kane – whose threat in the penalty area and ability to drop deep and link play is a hyper-developed vision of Ferguson’s skill profile – spent a season on loan with Millwall in the Championship when he was only a year younger than Ferguson is now.
“My loan at Millwall was a big part of my development,” reflected Kane years later. “I played in difficult, high-pressure games and I managed to come out of it positively.”
Irish football’s eternal search for a saviour and something to get excited about skews the reality that time is on Ferguson’s side. He won’t be 21 until October, and his career can have a long arc as his game does not rely on pace.
Ferguson’s value comes from the fact he is a tall, physical number nine with all-around skills, which have become a rare breed in modern football.
Another move would allow him sharpen those all-round skills: his most regular spell of football has thus far come under de Zerbi, whose innovative football relied on narrowing Ferguson’s parameters, effectively asking him to drop off and link play, and create space for the wide players to provide the real attacking thrust.
In his breakthrough season of 22/23, Ferguson averaged a shot every 26 minutes, but last season that worsened to a shot every 41.4 minutes. This season, across his admittedly piecemeal appearances, Ferguson has managed 12 shots, and only three on target. (It’s a better shot per minute rate, but from a small sample size.)
Ferguson’s ceiling is higher than any Irish player of his generation, and he has years to reach it.
His time at West Ham, however, is proving it might be the right time to take a step down to take a step forward.
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It's time for Evan Ferguson to take a step down to take a step forward
EVAN FERGUSON’S LOAN stint at West Ham is beginning to look like an episode of false promise.
Ferguson joined on loan on 3 February and had to wait until last Tuesday, 1 April, for his first start. It didn’t last long: Ferguson was hooked at half-time as part of a double substitution as West Ham slumped to a 1-0 defeat away to Wolves.
It was Ferguson’s sixth appearance for West Ham, though he has yet to play more than 45 minutes across any of them. He has also yet to score, and fluffed his lines against Wolves in failing to convert Jarrod Bowen’s driven cross from inside the box.
On the eve of the game, West Ham manager Graham Potter leapt to Ferguson’s defence, saying criticism of him has been has been “unfair.”
A day later, Potter benched him, criticised his miss, and lavished praise on his replacement, Niclas Fullkrug. A reminder that football’s only loyalty is to volatility.
“We had a really good chance, a big chance and we didn’t take that one and then they got into the game,” said Potter. “[Fullkrug was] really good. You can see what he brings to the team. We can go long into him, he picks up second balls, a threat in the box.”
Those characteristics might also have been used to describe Ferguson. Alas.
Instead this loan move looks like it will disappoint. Ferguson was signed at a time West Ham were without a recognised striker, as Fullkrug was injured and Michail Antonio recovering from his horror car crash.
And yet in that time Ferguson failed to make a dent in West Ham’s starting team. Potter initially preferred to start Bowen as a makeshift striker and now the revered Fullkrug is fit again. It thus looks more likely now that Ferguson returns to Brighton at the end of the season, rather than moving to West Ham on a permanent basis.
This is a season of stalled progress for Ferguson, as he simply hasn’t played enough football. Ferguson has totalled just 386 minutes across 19 Premier League appearances this season, an average of only 20 minutes per game. He has made just three Premier League starts and last completed 90 minutes in the Premier League 13 months ago, against Fulham on 2 March last year.
In fact, Ferguson has played marginally more minutes across eight games for Ireland (391 minutes) than he has in the Premier League thus far.
Injuries are the main reason things have stalled. They struck on the best day of Ferguson’s fledgling career yet: as he completed a hat-trick against Newcastle in September 2023, he picked up a knee problem that then forced him out of Ireland’s Euro 2024 qualifiers against Netherlands and France. To his credit, Ferguson flew over to Dublin to be assessed by the FAI staff and officially ruled out, and was then put under some pressure by his former manager Roberto de Zerbi to return to action as quickly as possible.
He did return, but his season then ended in March when he required ankle ligament surgery to emphatically address a niggling problem.
The severity of the injury has not been properly acknowledged: it took him out of action for six months and left him playing catch-up at the start of this season, having missed out on pre-season.
In the meantime, de Zerbi left and was replaced by Fabian Hurzeler, and all of a sudden Brighton became a club of brutal competition. No club had a larger declared net spend in world football than Brighton last summer.
Back when he was defending Ferguson, Potter explained that he wasn’t yet fit enough to make an instant impact for his new club.
“You have to see the context of where he was, in terms of the minutes he’s played previously, how he was on his return from injury,” said Potter.
“We got him at that really early stage of that return to play stage, so to think that you can just walk in to a Premier League team and just hit the ground running and playing is difficult, but he’s come on, he’s helped us.”
It would appear that Ferguson is caught in a vicious cycle in the elite end of the sport: he can’t get fully fit without playing regularly, but he can’t play regularly without getting fully fit.
The best means of addressing that is to find the highest level at which he will be given the time to build fitness by playing regularly. The West Ham experience has shown that may have to be at a lower level than the Premier League, where even a manager as familiar to Ferguson as Potter is not able to look beyond the short-term pressure to pick up points.
Ferguson’s international team-mate Troy Parrott is proof of the reinvigorating possibilities of a stint as a bigger fish in a smaller European pond, while stepping down to the Championship is another option.
Harry Kane – whose threat in the penalty area and ability to drop deep and link play is a hyper-developed vision of Ferguson’s skill profile – spent a season on loan with Millwall in the Championship when he was only a year younger than Ferguson is now.
“My loan at Millwall was a big part of my development,” reflected Kane years later. “I played in difficult, high-pressure games and I managed to come out of it positively.”
Irish football’s eternal search for a saviour and something to get excited about skews the reality that time is on Ferguson’s side. He won’t be 21 until October, and his career can have a long arc as his game does not rely on pace.
Ferguson’s value comes from the fact he is a tall, physical number nine with all-around skills, which have become a rare breed in modern football.
Another move would allow him sharpen those all-round skills: his most regular spell of football has thus far come under de Zerbi, whose innovative football relied on narrowing Ferguson’s parameters, effectively asking him to drop off and link play, and create space for the wide players to provide the real attacking thrust.
In his breakthrough season of 22/23, Ferguson averaged a shot every 26 minutes, but last season that worsened to a shot every 41.4 minutes. This season, across his admittedly piecemeal appearances, Ferguson has managed 12 shots, and only three on target. (It’s a better shot per minute rate, but from a small sample size.)
Ferguson’s ceiling is higher than any Irish player of his generation, and he has years to reach it.
His time at West Ham, however, is proving it might be the right time to take a step down to take a step forward.
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evan ferguson Premier League Republic Of Ireland Stalled progress West Ham