That's More Like It-Realistic Deal In The Offing

Most Hammers fans view media 'observations' like "a snip at £24 Million" with a certain degree of sardonic humour, during the Pellegrini era such sums seemed a mere Bagatelle for him and his brown envelope loving head of recruitment Husillos. Unfortunately the club is now in the middle of paying for those excesses and questionable fees incurred during their profligacy, at the worst possible time due to the fiscal fall out from the Covid Pandemic.

Player valuations that were once the norm now seem exorbitant, everyone, with the exception of arsenal's head of recruitment Edu, has had to think very clearly about the financial obligations that they are saddling their clubs with as they try to emerge from their collective financial 'dark ages'.

We at the Org have continually been banging on about the 'Gallic bargain basement' option available to David Moyes as the transfer widow countdown enters it's remaining TEN days. What started as a trickle of names is fast becoming a flood and is set to become a torrent as clubs in France desperately try to offload players in order to try and make ends meet.

Hot on the heels of Montpellier announcing the availability of striker Gaetan Laborde, Lille that of Zeki Çelik, Lyon Rayan Cherki and Islam Slimani, come Clermont who need to sell Mohamed Bayo. Although 'rough around the edges' he is an ideal candidate to get 'Moysed', at 24 years old and extremely fit he suits the template laid down by the Hammers manager and having been plying his trade in what is essentially an inferior league, is looking to progress and where better than at the London Dome as Michail Antonio's under study.

Now it would be fair to say that arriving at a club as an understudy could be seen as showing a lack of ambition, however if the potential arrival has done his due diligence properly, he will have looked at the Stats and seen the likelihood of how much game time he will get as a result of Big Mikey's independence seeking hamstrings.

Let's face it, the problems those Hammies cause aren't going to go away anytime soon, have you seen the size of them, no one is going to argue with them are they? So there is very chance that Antonio will play even less games, especially if the club don't manage to knock some sense into the 30 plus years old's noggin about wanting to play for Jamaica!

Therefore Bayo will be thinking that he won't have to play second fiddle for long, and when you factor in the amount of games West Ham have to play this coming season that logic seems pretty airtight. Available for a decent fee with an obvious sell on potential, given his tender years, he is someone the club really should be looking at, because he represents a genuine target. A realistic target may not seem exotic, but Hammers have done exotic, and look where it ended up!

Far better to cut the club's cloth according to what it can 'realistically' afford, and that means to dispense with viewing £24 Million transfers as bargains. - LN