{"id":597538,"date":"2021-07-29T07:52:24","date_gmt":"2021-07-29T11:52:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/?p=597538"},"modified":"2021-07-29T11:43:43","modified_gmt":"2021-07-29T15:43:43","slug":"alphonse-areola-west-ham-united","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/2021\/07\/29\/alphonse-areola-west-ham-united\/","title":{"rendered":"Alphonse Areola Joins West Ham United on Season-Long Loan"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/2021\/07\/27\/west-ham-united-alex-kral\/\" target=\"_self\">West Ham United<\/a>\u00a0have officially completed their first signing of the summer, with goalkeeper Alphonse Areola joining the club on loan.<\/p>\n<p>The Frenchman joins on a season-long loan with an option to buy.<\/p>\n<h2>Alphonse Areola Joins West Ham<\/h2>\n<h3>Competition for Places?<\/h3>\n<p>The signing of Areola for West Ham signifies David Moyes&#8217; ambition to strengthen ahead of their European campaign this season.<\/p>\n<p>Although they already have Lukasz Fabianski as their first-choice goalkeeper, the Polish international is coming towards the end of his career. The 36-year-old is out of contract next summer, and the Hammers are preparing for his departure.<\/p>\n<p>As a result, Areola will provide competition this season, and will allow West Ham to analyse him before deciding whether to sign him on a permanent deal.<\/p>\n<p>Speaking recently to the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.standard.co.uk\/sport\/football\/west-ham-transfers-david-moyes-keen-to-add-competition-to-great-group-ahead-of-historic-season-b947534.html\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Evening Standard,<\/a> Moyes said he was keen to add more competition for his places to his squad.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe need to get more competition, that\u2019s the important thing if we want to keep the standards up,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;But I\u2019ll tell you what we\u2019ve got and that\u2019s a great group of lads.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I\u2019m really lucky because we\u2019ve got a group of lads who are right on it, foot to the metal all of the time so hopefully we keep that going.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe\u2019ll find out what we can do in the future but we\u2019ve got no great update at all.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The 28-year-old, who is now out of favour at current club <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/2021\/07\/28\/paris-saint-germain-paul-pogba\/\" target=\"_self\">Paris Saint-Germain<\/a>, spent last season on loan in England\u2019s top flight at <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/2021\/07\/25\/fulham-paulo-gazzaniga-harry-wilson\/\" target=\"_self\">Fulham. <\/a><\/p>\n<p>Despite their relegation, Areola kept nine clean sheets in all competitions. He also made an average of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.whoscored.com\/Regions\/252\/Tournaments\/2\/Seasons\/8228\/Stages\/18685\/PlayerStatistics\/England-Premier-League-2020-2021\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">3.2 saves<\/a> in the Premier League last season, the ninth-most in Premier League.<\/p>\n<p>Areola&#8217;s displays for the Cottagers saw him win their 2020\/21 Supporters&#8217; Player of the Season.<\/p>\n<p>Main Photo<br \/>\n<a id=\"i5zKOAabQlN7mfxG0BIXkg\" class=\"gie-single\" style=\"color: #a7a7a7; text-decoration: none; font-weight: normal !important; border: none; display: inline-block;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.gettyimages.co.uk\/detail\/1318677860\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Embed from Getty Images<\/a><script>window.gie=window.gie||function(c){(gie.q=gie.q||[]).push(c)};gie(function(){gie.widgets.load({id:'i5zKOAabQlN7mfxG0BIXkg',sig:'TDTt9xE8YCdUaHXziAJG2LOXeLobNbLz1LSAOP7hrc0=',w:'594px',h:'396px',items:'1318677860',caption: true ,tld:'co.uk',is360: false })});<\/script><script src='\/\/embed-cdn.gettyimages.com\/widgets.js' charset='utf-8' async><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>West Ham United\u00a0have officially completed their first signing of the summer, with goalkeeper Alphonse Areola joining the club on loan. The Frenchman joins on a season-long loan with an option to buy. Alphonse Areola Joins West Ham Competition for Places? The signing of Areola for West Ham signifies David Moyes&#8217; ambition to strengthen ahead of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2795,"featured_media":597541,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[30,3,28,27],"tags":[4165,191],"class_list":["post-597538","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-premier-league","category-transfers","category-west-ham","tag-alphonse-areola","tag-david-moyes"],"modified_by":"Nat Goodlad, Editor","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/597538","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2795"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=597538"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/597538\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/597541"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=597538"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=597538"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=597538"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}