Reports on Friday link West Ham with Javier Pastore – but what does this mean for Hammers’ player-maker Manuel Lanzini ?
Times are genuinely exciting at West Ham right now, as things look to be fitting into place for the first time since moving into the London Stadium.
Marko Arnautovic is looking like the star West Ham fans always hoped he would be, the club just appointed Manuel Pellegrini as manager, and now Sky Sports are linking them with a £17.5m move for Paris Saint-Germain playmaker Javier Pastore.
That is, potentially, an incredible signing – Pastore is elite quality, and while his progress at PSG has stalled, the 28-year-old has shown for years that he’s at a level that would make him a good signing for any Premier League club.
The only real issue is that he plays in the same role as Manuel Lanzini – one of West Ham’s best players.
Lanzini will head to the World Cup this summer but Pastore will not. And is that the big issue for the Hammers hierarchy ?
Could West Ham be worried that Lanzini will shine on the World Cup stage – and be enticed away? That’s the immediate thought; why else would you sign his seemingly direct replacement?
But, unless Lanzini does have has a stellar World Cup, there isn’t any obvious destination for him. And so it might be that West Ham intend to play both – a step forward into an incredibly stylish brand of football, driven by Pellegrini and spearheaded by two creative compatriots. An Argentine revolution in East London that, if it came off, would make them (and West Ham) one of the darlings of the Premier League.
Expansive football outside of the Premier League’s top six has gone completely out of fashion and even Swansea felt the need to go for practicality before their relegation late last season. Still, West Ham showed incredible ambition in appointing Pellegrini and reportedly targeting Pastore – perhaps they are really going for it next season. It would certainly confound the cynics.
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