Swiss Ramble<\/a>, bringing back an ageing, declining former player on big money would feel like a backwards step.<\/p>\n\u201cWhy though?!,\u201d one fan wrote on X when the prospect of a Ward-Prowse homecoming was brought up. \u201cThe squad is big enough already and not to mention his huge wage! We need progress, not sentiment.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cGive me strength. I highly doubt it, thankfully. Wherever he goes, he\u2019s going to have to make a massive climb down on his wages. Absolutely no one is paying him anywhere near \u00a3115,000 a week.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHis wages will be too much. Not a chance [owners] Sport Republic sanction it for a 30-year-old.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cCan\u2019t see it. He\u2019d only be on the bench most weeks. I think [Shea] Charles and [Caspar] Jander are the starters. Then it would be JWP. Doubt it will happen though. Wages too big.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cA club legend who served us well. But this is lazy. We could never afford half of his wages.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe built a team around him that catastrophically failed. Let\u2019s not do that again.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNever go back. Not good enough to get in the team now.\u201d<\/p>\n
Nuno Espirito Santo spoke about Ward-Prowse in pre-Arsenal press conference <\/p>\n
\u2018Never go back\u2019. The phrase which often, and justifiably, appears whenever a heroic former player is linked with a stunning return to the club where he performed at his peak. <\/p>\n
See Cristiano Ronaldo, Robbie Fowler, Kaka and Andriy Shevchenko. In slightly different circumstances, Paul Pogba and Romelu Lukaku.<\/p>\n
West Ham will have one more training session before taking on Arsenal on Saturday. While confirming that Jean-Clair Todibo and Aaron Wan-Bissaka could make their returns, Nuno stopped short of ruling out a Hammers revival for Ward-Prowse, as unlikely as it may seem.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are trying to [get to] know the players as soon as possible, as best as we can,\u201d Nuno explains. \u201cSo we can make the proper solutions and decisions.<\/p>\n
\u201cJames wasn\u2019t involved [at Everton]. Let\u2019s see [if he returns at Arsenal]. We have one more training session.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe always have the same mindset; What the team needs. It\u2019s going to be a long season. It\u2019s too early to say what we expect. We need the squad strong and healthy.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"They often say \u2018never go back\u2019. But, this time, it is the Southampton fans rather than James Ward-Prowse…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":176096,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[10915,218,78538,45733,221,565,101,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-176095","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-football","8":"tag-championship","9":"tag-football","10":"tag-james-ward-prowse","11":"tag-nuno-espirito-santo","12":"tag-premier-league","13":"tag-southampton","14":"tag-sports","15":"tag-uk","16":"tag-united-kingdom","17":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176095","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=176095"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176095\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/176096"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=176095"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=176095"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=176095"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"West](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/GettyImages-2227777796-1024x683.jpg\")
Photo by Michael Reaves \u2013 Premier League\/Getty Images for Premier LeagueSouthampton fans react to potential James Ward-Prowse return from West Ham United <\/p>\n