OPINION
West Ham attacker Lucas Perez can kiss his Premier League career goodbye unless he fully makes the most of Andriy Yarmolenko reportedly being set for a long spell on the sidelines.
The 31-year-old Hammers forward joined the club from Arsenal in the summer and so far has only featured six times across all competitions for Manuel Pellegrini’s side.
Perez was then nowhere to be seen, he made neither the starting line-up or the bench, for Saturday’s clash against Tottenham and reliable club insider ExWHUEmployee has revealed on Twitter that he was simply completely dropped, not injured.
He didn’t make the squad-he is not injured https://t.co/2Qtf1eTXQh
— ExWHUEmployee (@ExWHUEmployee) October 22, 2018
This is a very worrying scenario for Perez as given that Pellegrini admitted to the London Evening Standard that he has a constant dialogue with first-choice forward Marko Arnautovic over the player’s fitness concerns, for him not to make the bench in order to be cover shows how far down the pecking order he is.
However he can force Pellegrini to play him by showing what he can offer the club if deployed as a right-winger.
Perez has played as a right-sided winger 63 times in his career and there is unfortunately, not for him, an opening on the right flank as according to the Daily Mirror current first-choice option Yarmolenko is set to be out for six months due to rupturing his Achilles tendon during the 1-0 defeat to Spurs.
The 30-year-old could easily force his way into Pellegrini’s plans and start to regularly featured if he fully exploits this reported injury blow for the Hammers.
Yet if he doesn’t then it is hard to see a way back for him at the London Stadium, despite him only recently joining, as the London club won’t hesitate to push him out the door if they think they’ve made a mistake recruiting him.
With this scenario possible then Perez might as well kiss his Premier League career goodbye as the Hammers did take a chance on signing him after his time at Arsenal wasn’t covered in success.
Therefore it’s unlikely another Premier League side would offer him a lifeline if the Hammers did get rid in the near future.
Though all is not lost as it stands.
If Perez is able to fully exploit Yarmolenko’s injury to help him get game time at the London Stadium then this brutal snub by Pellegrini can become a distant memory quite quickly.
