The chain of events that led to Graham Potter pinching Kyle Macaulay from Chelsea and hiring him as head of recruitment at West Ham started with a letter written more than 13 years ago.
Macaulay has set to work in the frenetic final throes of the January transfer window — but he and Potter have lived much of their professional lives in tandem, and Macaulay knows the drill by now.
The 38-year-old from Elgin, Scotland, is the Hammers’ new recruitment chief, taking on many of the responsibilities previously held by the unpopular and outgoing technical director Tim Steidten.
Straight into the deep end, then, with West Ham scouring the market for short-term solutions to their distinct lack of striking options.
Michail Antonio is unavailable all season with injuries sustained in his car accident in December, Jarrod Bowen is back soon after a broken foot, and Niclas Fullkrug suffered a serious hamstring injury a mere 15 minutes into Potter’s tenure — the straw that broke the camel’s back and the reason West Ham will be working so hard in the next four days.
That, along with any other transfer business, crosses Macaulay’s desk immediately, the former Stoke City and West Bromwich Albion left-back having now completed his first week working the phones.
It was with a fair dollop of inevitability that Potter went back to Chelsea for Macaulay, as his long-term project at the Hammers starts to take shape
Thirteen years ago, Macaulay wrote to Potter to ask about playing possibilities at Ostersunds in Sweden. Macaulay was 26 at the time, a semi-professional player juggling his middling football career with completing a degree at the University of Stirling.
Potter had no spaces in his squad but had been keen to expand his backroom staff. As a performance analysis, in came Macaulay. That hunger to return to playing never arrived and he hasn’t looked back since.
Following Potter wherever the manager’s burgeoning career took him, Macaulay became head of performance analysis at Ostersunds, then head of recruitment at Swansea City, Brighton, and Chelsea. Alongside the pair then, just as now at West Ham, was fellow Scot, Billy Reid. He is now the Hammers’ first-team coach.
When Potter was sacked as Chelsea manager in April 2023, Macaulay remained at Stamford Bridge. The Blues requested compensation of £1.5million to release him from his bumper contract and free him up to join Potter in East London just weeks ago. A deal was struck, with the Hammers paying more than £1m.
Macaulay will be based from West Ham’s Rush Green training ground in Dagenham, but regular foreign travel and lots of scouting missions are prerequisites for the job.
Certainly, Macaulay’s track record should encourage West Ham. At Brighton, he signed Moisés Caicedo from Independiente del Valle for around £4m. He cost Chelsea £115m. He masterminded deals to sign Marc Cucurella and Leandro Trossard too, both of whom turned a pretty profit when sold to Chelsea and Arsenal respectively.
And an exhaustive scouting network that plenty of teams would kill for also found Kaoru Mitoma in Japan, plus Simon Adingra in Denmark. Both have shone on the South Coast.
“It’s a good link between the coach and the club, in terms of recruitment,” Potter said of Macaulay last week.
“The hours and depths of conversations that you have to have within recruitment, it’s easier for Kyle than it is for me, because I am on the pitch and working with the 20-odd players that we have got here.
“I’m really happy with that appointment. It was something that was always going to happen; it was just a case of when. To have someone like Kyle to help in that regard is going to be great for us and great for me.”
Macaulay’s first task? Finding a prolific striker in the next four days who does not flop. Best of luck, Kyle, and welcome to West Ham.
