OPINION
What a week it has been on the transfer front for West Ham.
Two warmly received new signings at a combined cost of £30million have taken the tally of summer arrivals up to three and Manuel Pellegrini has not even taken his first training session yet.
With talk of a £37million bid lodged for Lazio attacker Felipe Anderson and other £20million-plus offers going in, supporters are pinching themselves in delight.
But this is West Ham and history tells us things never proceed too smoothly for too long.
All these new signings cost money, serious money, and the transfer kitty – said to be worth a maximum of £75million for the window – alone will not pay for them all.
There will have to be some high-profile outgoings and one of those could be central midfielder Pedro Obiang.
Football Insider claim Fiorentina have had one bid rejected for the Spaniard, 26, but will continue their pursuit and a fresh offer is to be tabled “later this week”.
Worryingly, it is said that West Ham will sell Obiang at the right price even though he signed a new contract last summer that runs until the summer of 2022.
You can almost hear the groans and picture the shakes of the head from Irons.
Obiang is too good and too important to be offloaded this summer. By all means, the club should cash in on the likes of Winston Reid, Adrian, Jordan Hugill, Sam Byram and even Michail Antonio.
But the club must not undo all their excellent recent transfer work by selling Obiang, even though he could hand them a fee of around £15million.
The midfielder was one of the team’s best players in the first half of last season and was linked with Liverpool before he suffered a knee injury that ruled him out for much of the second half of the campaign.
Obiang has improved markedly in his three seasons at the club and should get even better under Pellegrini.
West Ham must look to offload other players and not their midfield kingpin.
