CAN PABLO FORNALS SUCCEED WHERE JACK WILSHERE FAILED?

West Ham had the makings of a very decent team last season. Lukasz Fabianski was marvellous in goal; a pair of centre-back gems were unearthed in Fabian Balbuena and Issa Diop; and Felipe Anderson, Michail Antonio and (sporadically) the now-departed Marko Arnautovic provided goals and a bit of flamboyance in attack. The missing piece was a midfield schemer to unpick defiant defences.

Deep down, West Ham always knew Jack Wilshere would spend most of the season injured. Sadly, so did Manuel Lanzini. An exasperated Manuel Pellegrini has signed a player to replace them both: Pablo Fornals.

A conjurer of extraordinary assists, scorer of the occasional worldie, and adept in positions across the midfield, Fornals was at the heart of Spain’s triumph in this summer’s European Under-21 Championship. He’s actually 23, and a senior international, but even so he’s played a startling amount of football in a short time – over 150 appearances for Malaga and Villarreal in La Liga, the Europa League and the Copa del Rey.

Hammers fans have high hopes that Fornals can be the new Dimitri Payet, minus the walkouts. He already ticks the bargain box: securing Payet’s services for £10.7m was astonishing, and it’s similarly impressive to snap up Fornals for £24m in a summer that’s seen some baffling prices thrown around for midfielders (Newcastle valued Sean Longstaff at double that, for a start). A meagre two goals and three assists in La Liga last season seems to imply Fornals doesn’t hit his Youtube-friendly heights consistently enough, but the underlying numbers are far more positive – and his first touch, passing and movement are sublime.

Fornals may be a bit small for the Premier League’s roughhousing, but in Declan Rice he’ll have a midfield partner providing protection. Then there’s Mark Noble, who seems to have been tearing around West Ham’s midfield, shouting at everyone and pulling off the occasional Cruyff turn since the 1940s. Noble divides opinion. Some supporters reckon his legs went three years ago; others think he deserves a statue outside the Thunderdome (as some call the London Stadium).

Noble, Rice and Fornals could be a midfield to propel West Ham to the dizzying heights of 7th place. With attacking waves provided by a rotating carousel picked from Lanzini, Antonio, Anderson, Andriy Yarmolenko and Grady Diangana, Pellegrini is seemingly trying to build a budget Manchester City. To be honest, Irons fans would probably take that.