West Ham bagged a bargain with Beckham-esque star a generation too late for greatness… | OneFootball

Mohammed Kudus celebrates a West Ham goal with James Ward-Prowse.

Would James Ward-Prowse be more revered if he played 20 years ago? Johnny Nic reckons so. Still, the West Ham new boy is still proving to be a £30million snip.

Here’s ‘What’s So Great About…’ the former Saint.

Who’s this then? James Michael Edward Ward-Prowse is a 28-year-old 5’ 10” Portsmouth-born midfielder currently playing for West Ham United.

He must be one of the few professional footballers who is the son of a barrister. Although both his parents supported Pompey, he joined Southampton aged just eight and played for the academy for eight years, while also training with Havant & Waterlooville in order to get himself battle hardened.

He made his first-team debut in the League Cup aged 16 against Crystal Palace in 2011 and also played a game in the FA Cup and scored. The following year he made his Premier League bow, played 15 times but was mostly used as a substitute, much to his chagrin as he won Scholar of the Season at the academy.

However, 2013-14 was to be his breakthrough year as manager Mauricio Pochettino spotted his potential and brought him into the first-team. He played 39 times for the club that campaign and was pretty much a fixture thereafter. He spent 13 seasons playing for the Saints across 344 games in the Premier League, scoring 55 times. Overall to date he has played 427 games, made 60 assists and scored 59 goals. In 2021, he became the first Premier League player to play every single minute of two consecutive Premier League seasons. The following campaign he played 36 and last season 38. To miss just two league games in four seasons is a testament to his fitness and stamina and luck that no-one has stamped on him.

He’s got 11 caps for England making his senior debut in 2017 having played in the under-age sides winning the Toulon Tournament in 2016 with the Under-21s. They beat hosts France 2-1 and JWP captained the side.

In 2023 with Southampton getting relegated he made the move to the Hammers for 30 million English pounds and seems to have hit the ground running, integrating perfectly into the team.

Why The Love? I’m not sure why but being really bloody good at hitting a dead ball has somewhat fallen out of fashion. This makes no sense as, obviously, it’s often a great chance to score. Free-kick specialists who were once commonplace, with one at most clubs, are now a rarity. This is JWP’s cutting edge, his USP. There is no better dead-ball specialist in the league, whether it be taking corners or free-kicks. He holds the Southampton record for Premier League free-kick goals, and has the league’s best free-kick conversion rate since they were first recorded in the dark ages of 2003. He’s got 18 free-kick goals to his name and 16 penalties.

His corners are particularly excellent, especially from the left when he delivers those tricky curving balls at pace. Get a free-kick 25 yards out and he can put it in the top bin. The purr of anticipation as the ref awards the kick, is always a great thing and is something that is all too often missing from modern football. Ironically, CR7 was lauded for his dead ball prowess which was no prowess at all, as he always booted it over the bar or wide, season after season, going over 70 games without scoring one, despite always being given them to take. By any measure that’s dreadful.

By contrast our JWP, over the past five seasons, has scored directly from 21.7% of free kicks taken and is ranked among the top free-kick takers for shots on target. This is the sort of difference-maker that West Ham have signed and if he keeps those stats up, he will be crucial to West Ham not being rubbish again. This skill has been researched and seems to stem from unique biomechanics that generate unmatched power and consistency. His angled run-up allows him to open his body position to strike across the ball. It is very Beckham-ish which is not a coincidence as the former Manchester United man is something of a hero to JWP, who has now matched his 18 free-kick goals and has taken the #7 at the Hammers.

Maybe the rest of his game isn’t at the same standard as his dead-ball play and that’s why he hasn’t been signed by an elite club. Certainly Gareth Southgate remains unconvinced that being able to deliver a set-piece is enough to justify his place in the England team on a consistent basis. There is some sense to this. It’s great having someone who can batter in a free-kick but what if you don’t get any free-kicks in decent positions? It’s great being able to deliver a good corner but you might only get three in a game. That is at least the thinking, I suspect. In some senses, JWP has come through in the wrong age. Had he played in the 90s or early 2000s things may have been different.

You can’t beat a dead ball battering 1.

You can’t beat a dead ball battering 2.

He’s such an easy player to like…

Future days? He’s signed a four-year contract at West Ham and I’d be amazed if he wasn’t the captain of the club by the expiry of those terms. He’s just got that aspect to him, not just in his play but in the neatly-parted hair and upright posture. He needs to get rid of the Bellamy-esque golf swing celebration, of course, but we can forgive that in return for seeing the ball fly into the top corner from 30 yards out.

At 28 his game is well-established, could he develop his non-dead ball game a bit more? Probably, but in his late 20s it seems unlikely, not least because he’s so effective in other ways. His transfer this summer already looks like one of the best fits and at £30million, while not cheap is still a bargain.

It would be surprising if he gained a lot more England caps as the team is well stocked for creative midfielders, even though a set-piece specialist would be extremely useful to a team that scores many of its goals from dead ball situations. So he’ll remain one of England’s best players not to play much for his country but who is nonetheless widely admired for being an expert in his field.