If Sam Allardyce could roll back the clock, the former West Ham United manager might have shown a bit more faith in a player who became the Premier League outfit’s record signing 13 years ago last month.
And it speaks volumes about how much richer football has become between 2012 and 2025 that you’d have to look a long way down the list before you reached the one-time club-record signing in question.
Currently, the top five are Sebastien Haller, Max Kilman, Mateus Fernandes, Mohammed Kudus and Lucas Paqueta. A mixed bag, it’s fair to say. When Graham Potter welcomed Fernandes to West Ham a fortnight ago, the £40 million signing from Southampton found himself immediately stepping onto the podium.
Jean-Clair Todibo, Gianluca Scamacca, Edson Alvarez, Felipe Anderson and James Ward-Prowse make up the rest of the top ten. Less a mixed bag, more a quintet of highly-questionable investments.
As for Matt Jarvis, well, he just about sneaks into the top 40.
West Ham United paid what was then a record-breaking fee of £10.75 million for the former Wolverhampton Wanderers winger. Yet, just three years later, Jarvis would leave for Norwich in a cut-price £2.5 million deal having spent the 2015/16 season on loan at Carrow Road.
Now, speaking on the No Tippy Tappy Football podcast, Sam Allardyce opens up on the thinking behind bringing Jarvis to East London, and his regret over the nature of the winger’s departure.
Sam Allardyce reflects on Matt Jarvis regrets at West Ham United
Remarkably, and this is a stat backed up by Jarvis himself, the one-time England international produced the most accurate crosses in the whole of Europe during both his final season with Wolves and his debut season at West Ham.
A throwback sort of winger, chalk on his boots and big booming deliveries, Jarvis’ addition was made with the subsequent arrival of Andy Carroll – a few days later – in mind.
Europe’s most accurate crosser partnered with one of the game’s most fearsome aerial threats.
“He was West Ham’s record signing at the time I believe!” Allardyce recalls, having also signed another traditional wideman that summer in Stuart Downing.
“We were promoted to the Premier League and needed to get more service to our big centre-forward, so we brought him to West Ham from Wolves.
“There were two I brought in. Matt and Stuart Downing. We got Stuart from Liverpool. He was a Kenny [Dalglish] signing and Brendan [Rodgers] didn’t fancy him, so I got him on a decent transfer based on what we wanted to pay.
“And then we got Matt.”
Allardyce shares regrets over Jarvis’ Hammers exit and Norwich City transfer
Jarvis slipped down the pecking order as time went on, however. He eventually started only four league matches in the 2014/15 season. A recurring knee injury certainly didn’t help.
Yet, looking back, Allardyce admits some regret about the way Jarvis’ time in claret and blue ended, while bemoaning a relative lack of touchline-treading, cross-heavy wingers in the modern game.
“I keep the game simple. You are there to get down the line, take the full-back on, and cross it. I thought [Jarvis] was as good [for West Ham] as he was at Wolves,” Allardyce adds. “Then, was a time where I probably left him out more than I should have. I don’t know why, it was so long ago.
“We don’t see enough headed goals now! We see them off set plays but we don’t see as many as we should do, going down the line and crossing it. The fans love to see that.
“When big Andy set off, there was no stopping him heading it in the back of the net. But you had to give him the service.”
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Looking back now, while he certainly wasn’t everybody’s proverbial cup of tea, the job Allardyce did at Upton Park deserves huge respect.
Not only did he guide the Hammers to promotion out of the Championship, he then led the club to a top-half finish during their first season back in the Premier League.
Julian Faubert raved about Allardyce’s penchant for coaxing career-best performances out of his charges when reflecting on his time under the former Bolton and Newcastle boss last week.
Now, it is Allardyce’s turn to look back, albeit he cannot help but wonder how much further the Hammers could have gone with a little more ambition in the transfer market.
“Most of the time, we were flying,” Allardyce says. “We started building and I was quite sad in the end that we didn’t build as much as we should have when we were riding high in the top of the Premier League.
“My job was to take West Ham [to the top flight] and keep them there. We started to progress but, without more players… There’s never a time when you don’t need a player to improve the team, although there is a danger you buy a player and you regress because he wasn’t as good as you thought he was.”
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