West Ham United are closing in on the signing of Israel International Manor Solomon.
There have been a lot of mixed opinions on the signing of Manor Solomon, mainly for obvious political reasons, but what I haven’t seen is many people criticising the deal, or the player.
A deal worth £5 million +£2 million in add-ons to sign the 27-year-old from our rivals Tottenham Hotspur is an excellent deal considering he is already proven in the Championship and is coming into the prime years of his career.
Solomon has had a very up and down, stop start career. He started his career in his homeland before moving to Ukraine with Shakhtar Donetsk where he really made a name for himself, scoring goals against like likes of Real Madrid and Manchester City in the Champions League.
He moved to Fulham on a season-long loan in 2022 where he scored 5 goals in 24 appearances, but just nine starts. He impressed enough to earn him a permanent move to Tottenham Hotspur.
It really didn’t work out for him in a Spurs shirt, due to mainly a meniscus injury Solomon only made 6 appearances for the North Londoners, assisting twice.
However, it was his Leeds loan spell in 2024/25 while contracted to Tottenham that likely made Nuno highlight Solomon as one of his main transfer targets this summer.
After returning from that meniscus injury that kept him out for forty matches, Manor was loaned out to Championship side Leeds United. Out on that left wing Solomon managed 10 goals and 13 assists in 41 appearances in all competitions. A brilliant season, if he could put up numbers close to that for the Hammers we’ve more than got out moneys worth.
Leeds wanted to sign him permanently, but Spurs asked for a huge transfer fee and Solomon wanted a second chance in North London.
However, he didn’t end up getting that. Solomon was loaned out to La Liga side Villarreal. After just 11 appearances with just one start, in which he managed a solid 1 goal and 4 assists, the Israeli international was called back by Spurs for a lack of game time and immediately loaned back out, this time to Fiorentina. While he played more in Florence, 19 appearances and 10 starts Solomon scored twice and assisted twice.
So, he only made 11 starts in total last season and scored 5 goals and made 6 assists over two different top five leagues, I really think those are really good numbers, and combine that with his season in the Championship the year before. i think we’ve got a player that gets decent G/A numbers wherever he’s been given games for £7 million, this is a brilliant signing for us in my opinion.
He doesn’t have blistering pace, but he would almost certainly come in as our fastest attacking player which is huge, His dribbling is brilliant which is something Summerville really thrived in, and something we had to replace. The number of fouls he wins will be pretty comparable to Summerville.
He’s intelligent, he will manage to link up with players like Bowen, Taty, and Pablo really well and create a lot of chances for other players. We have proof of that with his 13 assists for Leeds in 23/24.
The only downsides of the signing I’ve seen fans point out from a footballing standpoint are his injury history and defensive contributions. He has missed 23 matches in the last two seasons since that huge meniscus injury that kept him out for almost 300 days. That obviously isn’t ideal, but say he misses 10-15 matches through injury I think the quality of player and the numbers he can put up is enough to make that worth it.
As for his lack of defensive qualities I’m not that bothered. As the big boys of the Championship we’re going to be dominating the ball in games more often than not, and it’s going to be very frustrating at times. But with a player with the creative skills, close control, and dribbling of Solomon we will have a lot more chance of breaking teams down rather than if we had signed someone like Simon Adingra who thrives in space.
Overall, I think Solomon will be a huge hit at West Ham and will be a huge part of why (hopefully) we return back to the Premier League.