Watford and West Ham United saw a number of players come and go in the January transfer window.
The Hammers were eventually forced to sell wantaway star Dimitri Payet back to Marseille for £25 million while striker Simone Zaza had his season-long loan deal terminated as he moved to Valencia.
The Zaza deal was one of the most bizarre in Premier League history after a clause was inserted which activated an ‘obligation to buy’ after just 14 games for the Hammers.
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West Ham United manager Slaven Bilic speaks with Simone Zaza
It put the club, the player and Slaven Bilic under immediate pressure despite there being a number of factors for the Italian international, not least moving to a new team in a new league in a different country with a different culture and language.
Zaza flopped and barely registered a shot on target let alone a goal in his time in East London before Valencia took over the loan deal from Juventus.
Niang and Watford have an incentive rather than pressure
But a piece of clever business done by Watford during the transfer window shows exactly how the Hammers should have approached the deal.
The Hornets paid a £650,000 loan fee to take M’Baye Niang for the rest of the season from AC Milan with an option to buy at the end of the season for around £15 million.
But the deal hinged on the inclusion of a similar obligation to buy clause for Walter Mazzarri’s side except with Watford it was weighted on goals rather than appearances.
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If Niang scores 10 goals the club will automatically have to sign him. But should he hit that kind of form the club would have been desperate to snap him up anyway, a win-win situation.
Zaza may still have flopped regardless but who knows how his West Ham career would have panned out had there been a more positively structured deal like Watford’s rather than one which put the player under intense pressure from the off.
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