Hugo Ekitike’s Liverpool switch could go one of two ways, as West Ham know all too well.

The former Eintracht Frankfurt striker has arrived in the Premier League with plenty of expectation as the Reds forked out a massive £79million despite just one solid season in Germany.

And as history tells us, buying from Frankfurt tends to be either genius or a disaster, with not much space in between.

The Bundesliga side have worked wonders in the transfer market in recent years, particularly up front, where the likes of Luka Jovic, Randal Kolo Muani and Andre Silva have been bought for pennies, scored buckets of goals, and then been sold for a fortune.

More often than not, buying sides have been left well short when it comes to value for money, with one of the worst examples being the last English side to spend big in Germany’s financial hub.

In 2019, West Ham plotted an audacious attempt to finally end their long-time striker curse, and were met with little friction when they obliterated their club record transfer fee with a £44m offer for Frankfurt’s Sebastien Haller.

The London club had become a career-ender for goalscorers, with well over £200m spent on forwards during the Gold & Sullivan era, only for Mark Noble to outscore them all.

Yet with Haller, it seemed to make some sense, spend big, sure, but at least end the club’s biggest problem for good.

The French-born Ivory Coast striker had just come off two equally impressive seasons in Frankfurt, combining up front with Serbian Luka Jovic to form one of Europe’s best goalscoring duos.

The 2017/18 season brought the club’s first silverware in 30 years with the DFB Pokal, and the following campaign they nearly went all the way in the Europa League, falling at the semi-finals.

Through it all, Haller not only notched 33 goals, but crucially supplied 16 assists, as he appeared to be the all-round striker who could not only score, but provide and make his team play better.

All of that combined with his ideal age of 25 and impressive build at 6ft 3in, the former Utrecht man seemed purpose built for the travails of Premier League football.

What happened to Sebastien Haller at West Ham?

The early signs weren’t bad either, Haller netted twice against Watford in his second game, and after eight games had a record of four goals and an assist, perhaps not £44m worth of production, but enough to keep the pressure off nonetheless.

Yet under the man who signed him, Manuel Pellegrini, things not only dropped off for Haller, but the whole team, resulting in the Chilean’s sacking in December.

In came David Moyes to end the season, and Haller would score just two more times, with the Scott moving him to the bench for the run-in, favouring converted winger/full-back Michail Antonio.

Hope wasn’t over, though, as Haller started the following season in even better form than the last, scoring five in five to raise hopes the striker curse was finally over.

Yet as things again dropped off, so did Moyes’ faith, and it soon became clear that the player and manager just weren’t a fit.

An offer of £18m from Ajax came in during the January window, and Moyes cut his losses, but was soon left with egg on his face.

Was Sebastien Haller a success at Ajax?

Haller became the fastest player in the Champions League’s history to reach ten goals, doing so in just six games, and the verdicts were in how West Ham’s record signing only lasted 18 months.

Ajax influencer TheEuropeanLad told talkSPORT: “At West Ham he was more like a lamp post, they just put him up front and they put him on an island and they threw long balls at him.

“That does not work with him because he doesn’t have the technical ability to do anything far away from the goal, he can’t dribble well, he’s not very fast, he has no skills. 

“So what needs to happen is you need to build a team around him with lots of movement and lots of depth on the wings, and you need a creative No. 10 behind him.

“And when you do that a lot of space opens up and he will get his chances every game and he’s a good finisher, that’s a good aspect, he will finish chances.

“That’s the big difference with West Ham, because over there he wasn’t used like that and that’s the reason he’s so successful at Ajax, because we have a very creative and attacking team, and as a striker that’s just heaven because you will get so many chances every game.”

Former Netherlands and Ajax winger Johnny Rep had a similar view of his West Ham failures.

The 42-cap Holland international said: “I think he was a bit expensive. He has already scored a few goals and given assists.

“But I don’t think he’s a world XI footballer either.

“He fits in [at Ajax], I think, because there are all those little men running around.

“Then it is nice if there is also a tree of a guy in between who can sometimes head in a ball.”

Haller didn’t just head in a ball, he put away 47 efforts in just 66 games, enough for Ajax to win two Eredivisie titles and pocket £30million from Borussia Dortmund, turning one of West Ham’s worst buys into one of the Amsterdam outfit’s best.

Things didn’t work out at Dortmund due to a shock testicular cancer diagnosis, from which Haller has thankfully now fully recovered and later became his country’s hero at the 2023 Africa Cup of Nations.

Yet whether it’s Haller, Jovic, Silva, Kolo Muani, or Ante Rebic, buying big from Frankfurt certainly isn’t a guarantee of success, even with Liverpool’s worries undoubtedly soothed by Omar Marmoush’s start at Manchester City.