With Declan Rice expected to move from West Ham this summer, the Hammers can’t sit on their laurels when it comes to strengthening the squad in their captain’s absence.
Indeed, whomever is successful in signing Rice, and The Telegraph (subscription required) say that Arsenal are likely to be that club, the reported £92m transfer fee that the east Londoners will receive in return has to be reinvested wisely.
If David Sullivan is able to stand his ground in terms of a sale price, which could be difficult given the negotiating position, the Hammers could be the winners in terms of the players that they’re able to bring in to help fill the void left by Rice.
According to the content creator that goes by the name of ExWHU Employee, one of those players is expected to be Ajax star, Edson Alvarez.
“I can exclusively reveal that the player from the Americas that I said on the podcast that we had begun enquiries with is Edson Alvarez of Ajax,” he said on his West Ham Way Patreon podcast (subscription required).
“Talks have been going on for over a week and he is seen as a good replacement for Declan Rice although we do face a lot of competition for the player including from Dortmund.”
The difficulty for the Hammers board is that they don’t have a free run at the player as ExWHU Employee noted, and according to Yahoo/Planet Sport, Borussia Dortmund have already agreed personal terms with Alvarez.
At this stage, if West Ham want to hijack the deal then they are going to have to move very quickly indeed.
Even if it’s an uphill struggle given how far advanced Dortmund appear to be, the ink hasn’t yet dried on the contract so to speak, so Sullivan has to pull out all the stops to get his man.
Mexico is in North America, not South America.