Been a while but here we go again, I have read the article titled ‘If I owned West Ham United’ and almost felt put off writing this, as it hinted that we would give up the pursuit of Alexandre Lacazette and focus on Vincent Janssen. I think the Dutch striker would be a good purchase for our club, but I was lead to believe differently regarding the Lyon attacker. At the end of last week Exwhuemployee hinted that today we would submit a bid of around £37m plus add ons and I had heard similar. So this website gets confusing, as there are 3 stories about Lacazette now and Ex’s new article (to come at 10) may side with the mystery author and leave me on my own here. Going by Ex’s previous article, the outcome is the same as my belief, that Alexandre would become a Hammer in this window even though the fee is a big one. This could impact other deals we had lined up, and Aulas (Lyon President) is a tough negotiator. However the plus for West Ham is they are watching the movements of Alvaro Morata who could move back to The Bernabeu, as clubs circle for the Juventus front man. Real Madrid have the option to buy him back, and this could allow Lyon to move for their former man, Karim Benzema, to replace Lacazette, should they decide to allow the Frenchman to move on. So for now, I still predict we will go as far as we can in pursuit of Lacazette and am quietly confident our chairman will get him – there is plenty of time left in the window and despite their deadline of the 1st of July, I just do not see us giving up just yet.
Crystal Palace have been linked with James Tomkins but I can see our Senegalese striker, Diafra Sakho, joining them. This is more from the Palace side of things and does not come direct from a source but is more Chinese whispers. They are hopeful that they will sign at least one striker for around the £10m mark this summer. It falls short of West Ham United’s valuation but it is clear Bilic does not want players here that wish to leave and it looks more and more likely that Diafra falls into that category. Sunderland made an offer earlier on of £11m but with just £6m of it up front and the rest in a complicated structure so the £10m cash fee from Crystal Palace may provoke some thinking in the board room.
Lastly we look at our prodigy, Reece Oxford. It does look like Newcastle United’s interest is firm as Benitez has a cleaning up job to do and has been given a tight control of transfers. This is unusual over the last few seasons but the club had to do all they could to keep him. Steven Taylor left this summer, plus Coloccini wishes to head back to Argentina so cover in central defence is required but Reece would be behind Lacselles and Mbemba in the pecking order. Reece wants more game time but personally I expect the club to wait until we know if we will be in the Europa League group stage or not. That does mean waiting until the 25th of August, hopefully we will be and Reece, and other youngsters, may have a big part to play next season if that is the case.