West Ham’s pursuit of excellent striker is reportedly over, and for a very good reason. Despite having a new recruitment team headed by Tim Steidten in control of transfers, a fair few of West Ham’s targets this Summer are ones they’ve shown interest in before. Max Kilman is someone the club have admired for a while, as is Aaron Wan-Bissaka, and it has been believed that the striker they could end up bringing in is another long-term target.
Jonathan David’s goal scoring record speaks for itself really. In just 4 Ligue 1 seasons, he’s found the back of the net on 71 occasions. Undoubtedly, his natural striker instincts are the exact thing the Hammers have been crying out for for years now.
Although it seemed like this Summer could finally be the one that he makes the switch to East London, the deal appears to be completely off even though the club were willing to match Lille’s £30 million demands, Claret and Hugh reports.
While they were willing to pay the substantial fee, they were not willing to pay the £10 million agent fees that were being asked. Although these fees have caused issues in the past when the Hammers have tried signing players, this time it’s completely understandable. Paying that amount of money to an agent is ludicrous and shouldn’t even be entertained – it could get them Aaron Wan-Bissaka.
In the an age where FFP and PSR are on club’s minds more than ever, it would be idiotic to pay that much to an agent, essentially putting up the price of the move by a third.
