West Ham wanted £162m-rated Mo Salah on loan in 2015

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West Ham United wanted Mo Salah on loan three years ago.

These last few seasons have been littered with ‘what if’ moments for West Ham United?

What if they never left Upton Park? What if Andy Carroll didn’t have an injury history which goes on longer than one of Arsene Wenger’s coats? What if Slaven Bilic didn’t replace Dimitri Payet with Robert Snodgrass?

But the most interesting question for West Ham fans is this: What if Bilic actually signed Mo Salah in the summer of 2015?

According to The Mirror in June of that year, Bilic asked Chelsea about the prospect of signing him on loan after the Egyptian attacker netted six goals in 10 starts for Fiorentina, but the 25-year-old wound up joining Roma and went on to lay the foundations for his £36 million switch to Liverpool last summer.

Fast forward nine months and Salah, who has 35 goals across all competitions for the Reds, is now worth an eye-watering £162 million, but what if West Ham did sign him three years ago?

The Hammers went on to have a superb first season under Bilic despite failing to sign Salah, with the Payet-inspired Irons finishing seventh in the Premier League.

Interestingly, West Ham only finished four points adrift of a Champions League spot that season and, knowing what we know now, it seems very plausible that they would have placed far higher than seventh if the former Croatia boss was successful in luring Salah to East London. Surely he would have won more than four points for them.

Chelsea would have recalled him had he done to Premier League teams what he is now doing for Liverpool, but a brilliant season-long loan at Upton Park might have still had a ripple effect to this day. Would they have kept Payet if they were in the Champions League, for example?

What if there was no substance to the rumour in the first place? And what if Salah would have rejected West Ham even if they were interested?

We will never know how genuine their interest was, but what we do know with far more certainty is that United probably wouldn’t be two points above the relegation zone and fighting for their Premier League lives now had he joined even for a season. That makes Salah the most agonising ‘what if’ question of all for West Ham.