West Ham Opinion: Hammers should not hesitate to lower their £10 million asking price for Pedro Obiang and cut their losses
According to The Sun, West Ham have slapped a £10 million price tag on midfielder Pedro Obiang amidst interest from Serie A clubs Sassuolo and Bologna.
Obiang’s former club Sampdoria also showed an inclination to bring him back earlier in the summer but they have now shifted their attention elsewhere, The Sun understands.
The 27-year-old featured regularly in West Ham’s matchday squads under Manuel Pellegrini last season but he struggled to nail down a starting role due to his struggles with injuries, whilst his mediocre form didn’t help his cause either. Obiang made a total of 24 appearances in the Premier League the last term, although only 12 of them came as starts.
Both Bologna and Sassuolo are keen to come up with a loan deal in the first place with an option to buy at the end of the 2019-20 season but West Ham are only interested in an outright transfer for a fee of £10 million (h/t The Sun). Obiang has apparently been deemed surplus to requirements by Pellegrini but the Hammers look determined to get a good resale value by offloading him this summer.
Obiang, who joined West Ham from Serie A club Sampdoria for a fee of £4.3 million in the summer of 2015 under former Hammers manager Slaven Bilic, has made a total of 116 appearances for the East Londoners, accumulating 3 goals and 3 assists in the process.
The 27-year-old former Spanish U-21 international has struggled to get to grips with the English game and hasn’t really lived up to the expectations at the London Stadium, with injuries also hampering his progress over the past four years.
The defensive midfielder came in with a lot of promise and potential, having hit great heights with Sampdoria in the Serie A, but his spell in the Premier League hasn’t given him much to write home about.
Also, with the return of Jack Wilshere from injury and Carlos Sanchez, who is also likely to be available from the start of the upcoming season, Obiang’s position at West Ham looks threatened, to say the least. The likes of Declan Rice and Mark Noble formed a formidable pairing at the heart of the midfield last season and things might get worse for Obiang in the foreseeable future.
To put things into perspective, it is high time for West Ham to move away from the mediocrity of Pedro Obiang and the most sensible stance for the Hammers would be to cut their losses on the Equatorial Guinea international this summer.
His inability to adapt to the Premier League coupled with his patchy injury record means that he is very much dispensable and it is not difficult to see that the 27-year-old doesn’t have a future at the club.
Now, the point of the matter is, West Ham look determined to make a significant profit by selling the player to the Serie A clubs, as evident from their £10 million valuation of the 27-year-old.
However, the Hammers should understand that Obiang probably hasn’t done too much over the past four seasons at the club to command such a daunting fee, which is very much contrasting to the paltry £4.3 million that they had paid to Sampdoria to acquire his services in 2015.
West Ham are still very much in the market for new additions, following their capture of Spanish international playmaker Pablo Fornals from Villarreal. The Hammers should also look for a new central midfielder to partner Rice and take the pressure off the likes of Sanchez and Noble, given that both the players are on the wrong side of 30.
With that in mind, they need to get rid of the deadwood in their ranks in order to fund reinvestment in all areas of their squad and offloading Obiang would certainly boost their transfer kitty.
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Having said that, the Hammers should stop playing hardball with the potential suitors and accept any offer above the £4.3 million that they had spent on the midfielder. That would still see them make a profit from the sale, albeit to a lesser degree.