West Ham midfielder Lucas Paqueta will miss the Sunderland game this afternoon through ‘injury’, as he tries to push through a move to Flamengo in Brazil.

There is no secret about it, Flamengo want to sign Lucas Paqueta, their sporting director has said it, their manager, former Chelsea and Atletico Madrid full-back Filipe Luis has said so. There is also no secret that Paqueta wants to go back to Flamengo, he’s made that clear on plenty of occasions.

In his press conference ahead of West Ham vs Sunderland, Nuno Espírito Santo said: “The situation is the same as last week.We hope the club and Lucas can find a solution.

“He won’t be in the squad for the game against Sunderland this weekend. We have to assess his injury day by day.”

Whether or not Lucas really has this injury or not, he won’t be playing against Sunderland and he didn’t play against QPR or Spurs either, so like Nuno said, the club and Lucas really need to find a solution.

As things stands, all of Flamengo’s offers for the 28-year-old have been turned down. The most recent was reportedly €38m + €4m in add ons. The Hammers rejected this offer, maybe not because of the fee, but because they want him back on loan for the remainder of the season.

That makes complete sense, despite what some fans might say, he’s one of our best players, certainly one of our most talented, and he’s Nuno’s favourite player.

Why would we want to get rid of our managers favourite player in the middle of a relegation battle it makes no sense. Especially because we probably do not have any form of replacement lineup for him, what creative player with a skill level as Paqueta, would want to come to us in our dire situation.

Anyway, if we’re not already, we need to start looking for potential replacements for Paqueta. The Brazilian transfer window goes on till March third, he might refuse to play until then and we can’t have that. I don’t think he’ll refuse to play for the rest of the season if we keep him because he wants to make the World Cup squad, but I do think he will as long as Flamengo are in for him.

So, we either need to tell them to pay what we want or go away, or just accept the offer and get a replacement in, because we can’t afford a saga like this in the situation we’re in, we need everyone pulling together fighting for our Premier League survival.