West Ham United talisman Marko Arnautovic is ready to leave the club for a top team, according to his brother and agent Danijel.
The Austrian international, on a reported £100,000-per-week [Source: Spotrac], has been a huge hit since joining the Hammers, and now it may be time for him to move on.
“He’s already playing in the Premier League and that’s where the best players are,” Danijel Arnautovic told Austrian publication Kurier. “But for a player like Marko this cannot be the end.
“He’s a big part of West Ham’s team but I think it’s possible to tease out more of him. For that to happen, he has to play for a top team. Marko is ready for the next step.”
When asked if the 29-year-old could leave the club in January, Danijel replied: “That’s possible. It was already very, very close this last summer.”
OPINION
This is the sort of news that no West Ham fan wants to hear. Arnautovic is the best player at the club and is integral to everything the team does well on the pitch. He has excelled since being moved into a central role by David Moyes last season and has flourished again so far this term. He is irreplaceable for the Hammers and to lose him would be a massive blow. Having said that, the former Stoke City man is 29 years of age and probably views these next couple of transfer windows as his last chance to join a big club. Is it fair to stand in the way of him doing that? Someone of Arnautovic’s quality should be playing for one of the top teams in Europe, that’s for sure, so it may be that his West Ham exit is simply inevitable. However, until it reaches that point the club should be doing everything they can to keep him in East London.
