Slaven Bilic pulled the plug on a deal to sign Kelechi Iheanacho and the player has now joined rivals Leicester City.
Iheanacho has moved to the King Power from Manchester City for £25 million, as confirmed on the club’s official website.
But for much of the transfer window the Nigerian looked on the verge of a move to East London.
That was until Slaven Bilic made the bold call to pull the plug on the deal at the 11th hour, as reported by the Evening Standard.
According to the report Bilic recognised the striker’s potential but was understood to be less sure about committing a large chunk of West Ham’s summer transfer budget on a player who had a bit-part role at the Etihad last season.
An insistence from Manchester City on a buy-back clause was also said to be a sticking point and Bilic’s decision sparked an angry reaction from Hammers fans – as they had only signed Pablo Zabaleta on a free transfer at the time.
West Ham have since signed Joe Hart, Marko Arnautovic and Javier Hernandez but with a number of players shipped out the club’s net spend is less than £10m.
Given Andy Carroll still has no return date and Diafra Sakho is also injury prone it leaves Bilic with just Hernandez as an out and out senior striker.
So could he live to regret calling off the Iheanacho deal, particularly in light of a stunning statistic which puts the 20-year-old ahead of anyone else in Premier League history.
That’s because Iheanacho has the best minutes per goal rate of any striker to have score more than 10 goals in the Premier League.
His ratio of a goal every 107 minutes is better than Sergio Aguero (110), Harry Kane (117), Thierry Henry (122) and Ruud van Nistelrooy (128).
Obviously Iheanacho’s goals have come with a lot less game time than those goalscoring legends.
But the numbers bode well for a stellar career for the Foxes and for the relative bargain fee of £25m.
Perhaps Bilic should have taken the chance on the young striker who could have formed a formidable partnership with Chicharito.
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