More multi-millionaires?

Sorry again that it's been so long since I last wrote here. A million things seemed to have happened over the last two weeks, so I won't waste too much time on my absence. I've been busy at work and had a quick trip to Wisconsin with friends. But I've been reading and watching the news on the Irons. So here goes.

Midfielder Kieron Dyer is the latest high-wage player linked in a move to West Ham. The Times reports that he may be had by West Ham for £5 million. The Independent reports that West Ham are the favorite to sign the midfielder, who wants to move from Tyneside down to London to be closer to his young family, which is located in his hometown of Ipswich. Dyer is needed to fill in for the injured Laurent Faubert, whose Achilles injury is expected to keep him out six months. The Guardian reports that Tottenham will make a bid "to rival" West Ham's, although some of the other reports indicate that Tottenham's wage-scale will make it tough to entice Dyer, who reportedly makes £80,000 per week. Meanwhile, Newcastle manager Sam Allardyce, who has midfield problems of his own with the injury to new signee Joey Barton and the sale of Scott Parker to West Ham, wishes he could do something to convince Dyer to stay, but adds that he understands that Dyer feels the need to move closer to home to take care of personal issues.

West Ham's midfield is actually starting to seem a bit crowded. Even with Faubert's injury, West Ham have new signees Parker and Freddie Ljungberg to go along with holdovers Mark Noble, Luis Boa Morte, Matthew Etherington and Lee Bowyer, at least. Of course, the Hammers also sent out two of their top midfielders in Nigel Reo-Coker and Yossi Benayoun. (I caught Aston Villa's friendly away to Toronto FC, and Reo-Coker helped set up a goal in Villa's 4-2 win.)

On the striker front, West Ham don't appear to be done after adding Craig Bellamy earlier this summer. The Independent reported Thursday that Bolton striker Nicolas Anelka may be part of "Eggert Magnusson's revolution" at West Ham with a £12 million offer but the Guardian says in Friday's papers that Magnusson has assurred Bolton that Anelka will have to watch the revolution on TV (except for the two matches between the clubs). The Guardian also reports that West Ham are more likely to make a bid for Icelandic striker Eidur Gudjohnsen from Barcelona.

The one thing that still nags at me is the idea that West Ham may be spending all of their money on players in their late 20s or early 30s, with the exception of Faubert, who is 23. It's something that you see in baseball, too, where players can become free agents after six years of play in the majors. They get paid for past performance rather than what they can be expected to do going forward. It's excting, at first, to see your team signing players whose names you recognize as quality, but it doesn't always work out that way. Then again, when the Hammers missed out on 23-year-old Darren Bent at £16 million, I thought that perhaps Tottenham had a case of the winner's curse. But at least they spent the money on a younger player who can be expected to grow. That's the risk that helped the player who's in his late 20s, I guess, as managers prefer to spend their big bucks on "proven talent," and that's no different in football than in baseball or any other sport.