Andy Gray has claimed that Marko Arnautovic’s extended farewell against Arsenal on Saturday suggests that he’s about to leave West Ham.
BBC Sport reported on Thursday that an unnamed Chinese club had submitted a £35million bid for the Austrian, and Gray believes we’ve seen the last of Arnautovic at the London Stadium.
“When players leave the football pitch when they’re subbed what they do is clap the fans,” he told beIN SPORTS. “When he left the pitch he didn’t, kind of, clap them. You don’t wave to your fans if you’re coming back next week or the week after.
“Players are very clever these days, they send little messages to us. That to me wasn’t a guy coming off and thanking the fans, that was a guy coming off and saying ‘thank you, I’ve enjoyed my time here but I’m off’.”
OPINION
It’s difficult to disagree with what Gray is saying, here. It very much looked as if Arnautovic was saying his final farewell to the London Stadium crowd on Saturday. It’s a shame, but ultimately if he doesn’t want to be at the club then he needs to be shipped out. At the end of the day he is 29 years of age and probably sees a potential move to China as his last chance to earn really big money. That’s hard to accept for most of us who can only dream of earning anything close to what the former Stoke City man is on at West Ham, but that’s the only possible explanation for his desire to move to Asia. He’s certainly not going there for the quality of football. He seems to have made up his mind, that looked clear on Saturday. He is a wonderfully talented footballer but you can’t keep unhappy players at the club. If he values financial gain over the competitiveness and the quality of football in England then that’s his prerogative.
