A season that initially promised to be utterly catastrophic is slowly being eased around, as new manager Manuel Pellegrini begins to assert himself at the helm of West Ham United.
A blockbuster summer transfer window saw almost an entire new team brought to the east of the English capital; a total of almost £100million expenditure with purchases including Andriy Yarmolenko and Felipe Anderson, the biggest amount spent in the history of the club.
However, a certain hangover from predecessor Slaven Bilić is now leaving supporters who flock to the London Stadium perplexed, with one attacking player’s extortionate salary in particular belying a far from adequate goal return.
Former Manchester United forward Javier Hernandez, a summer 2017 extravagance for the Hammers in a £16million deal with Bundesliga side Bayer Leverkusen, arrived at the club to become the highest paid player in West Ham history.
The 30-year-old staggeringly commands a salary of £140,000 per week, or roughly a total of £7.28million in wages per season. A break-down of this brobdingnagian amount shows why West Ham fans are right to be anxious about exactly what that money has been rewarded with.
Joining on Monday July 24th 2017, that means by the date of this article’s publication (20th November 2018), ‘Chicharito’ has been plying his trade as an Iron for just over 69 weeks and has taken home a staggering £9.66million in that period.
With the Mexican under contract at the club until June 30th 2020, just slightly less than 18 months away, that means he could potentially earn a cumulative total of £21.42million.
So far this season in the two competitions of the Premier League and the EFL Cup, Hernandez has made 10 appearances, starting just twice (and being dropped from the squad entirely on five occasions), and scoring in just two different matches in the 14 weeks since the start of the 2018/19 campaign.
That means Hernandez has managed to fill his pockets with £1.96million of bunce this season, or £980,000 per goal he himself scored. A total of 457 minutes of first team action means in theory he’s earned £4288.84 for every minute he’s been on the pitch.
But let’s have a gander at the entirety of his time as a Hammer.
10 goals in 43 appearances in all competitions across the one and a bit seasons since his arrival back in England is bordering on woeful, before one takes into account that this equates to £966,000 per goal.
His amount of starts have decreased exponentially since when he first arrived at the club. 23 of Hernandez’ last 25 Premier League appearances have come as a substitute (since 23rd December 2017 - roughly coinciding with the appointment of Bilić's first replacement David Moyes).
With 97 weeks left until his current contract expires and acknowledging the previous statistic - 10 goals in just under 16 months - that equates to a ratio of a goal every 6.9 weeks, we could speculate that Hernandez could potentially score a further 15 goals (14.5, but we’ll give him the benefit of the doubt).
If the trend continues, in total that would be an expected 25 goal tally for a player who could have royally rogered £21.42million out of West Ham, or snatched and grabbed £856,800 per goal recorded.
Hammers will either hope the forward - who was so vital, and genuinely electrifying as a potent goalscorer for Manchester United during his initial introduction to English football - either ups his game, or his manager begins to show some faith to start milking Hernandez’s extortionate fee in the hope of a decent return.
Should he stay in the Premier League or is his time here done?
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