Callum Wilson has scored two goals now in just three Premier League starts for West Ham United but, even more importantly, he is yet to be ruled out of a single game through injury

Not quite one in the eye for those who doubted the 33-year-old – Callum Wilson missed a staggering 115 Newcastle games due to injury or illness during half a decade on Tyneside, so those concerns were understandable – but justification for the faith shown in him by the Hammers.

A club who needed a reliable, Premier League-level marksman went out and gone one.

As Nuno Espirito Santo pointed out after West Ham United beat Burnley 3-2 on Saturday, there is no substitute for a solid poacher’s instinct. Callum Wilson and Tomas Soucek ‘won us the game’, Nuno said on the back of a second successive top-flight victory.

After experimenting with big-money arrivals from abroad and talented-if-troubled youngsters – Niclas Fullkrug and Evan Ferguson started a combined seven league games in 2024/25 and notched three goals between them – Wilson could yet prove to be exactly what the doctor ordered.

Not a long-term solution. Far from it. But a striker capable of stepping in, even if just for a single campaign, and proving himself to be the first solid, top-flight goalscorer West Ham have had since Michail Antonio’s heyday.

Not bad for a free agent. One who, per some reports, is earning a base salary of around £6,000-a-week.

Callum Wilson shines at West Ham United while Evan Ferguson struggles at Roma

To think, per insider Sean Whetstone, West Ham had hoped to include an option-to-buy clause in the contract of Evan Ferguson when the Republic of Ireland international joined on loan from Brighton ten months ago.

Say what you want about Callum Wilson – Hammers News can confirm that the ex-Newcastle hitman signed a ‘very’ incentivised contract based around game and goal bonuses in August – after that Burnley win, most fans would gladly accept a low-risk, short-term deal over a high-risk, potentially extremely expensive one.

Even if it leaves West Ham returning to square one in the summer of 2026.

AS Roma paid £2.6 million purely to sign Ferguson on loan for the 2025/26 campaign. Should they look to keep Brighton’s forgotten man in the Italian capital on a permanent basis, they would have to part with a further, and even-more eye-watering, £35 million.

With zero goals in ten games, and with the already injury-hit Ferguson missing the last three matches with an ankle sprain, Wilson is looking increasingly like a very solid, if far-from spectacular, bit of business by comparison.

Brighton loanee Ferguson has not scored a league goal since October 2024

Including a West Ham loan spell so forgettable it makes Kalvin Phillips look like Declan Rice, Ferguson has failed to score in his last 27 club appearances.

Per European football expert Andy Brassell, Ferguson was always going to be a somewhat risky move for Roma. Yet, the sheer size of that gamble is now becoming clear, as the Giallorossi reluctantly accept that their hopes of a ‘jackpot’ are fading fast.

• Saturday 22nd November
  Premier League

• • West Ham

    

    14:00

    

    Aston Villa

“After the early promise of Evan Ferguson, now [comes] the realisation that this is a proper reclamation project,” Brassell tells the On the Continent podcast. “It is going to take time to get there.

“This is a player of potential but not any more than a player of potential, even if that potential is pretty big.

“There has been speculation that [Roma] could send him back to Brighton. We don’t know if that is the case, but he hasn’t scored yet.”

Gian Piero Gasperini says Ferguson ‘has to deliver’

Both sporting director Ricky Massara and head coach Gian Piero Gasperini are at pains to highlight the importance of patience. But a year-and-a-half after he returned from an ACL tear which saw his then-glittering career shudder to a halt, that coming-of-age hat-trick in September 2023 against Newcastle feels more and more like a distant memory.

“Evan Ferguson has played in nine out of ten games,” Gasperini said back in October, the always-outspoken and never-afraid-to-offend Italian taking aim at his still-goalless number nine.

“He has to deliver on the pitch and his performances haven’t been positive. To be honest, yesterday was the first time I saw him train properly. He’s coming from the Premier League, and he hasn’t played much last season.

“We need to be patient with him”.

For a club in West Ham’s position, where instant results are required and goals do not come all-that easily, bringing Callum Wilson on a free could yet prove to be a bit of a masterstroke, even if one of the quick-fix variety.