OPINION
If there is one player that West Ham United fans don’t want to lose – aside from starlet Declan Rice – it’s Brazilian wizard Felipe Anderson.
It’s been an up and down debut season in English football for the former Lazio man, but there’s no doubt that he is one of the Hammers’ most gifted players.
The club’s supporters will doubtless have been quaking in their boots earlier this week, then. Bleacher Report claimed that West Ham co-owner David Sullivan has told Anderson that he will be allowed to leave if a top six side make a suitable bid. There is thought to be a ‘gentleman’s agreement’ that £75million would be enough to prise the 25-year-old away from the London Stadium.
All of that makes for extremely disconcerting reading from a West Ham fan’s point of view. They want Manuel Pellegrini to build something in East London after the heavy expenditure last summer. You can’t do that, however, by selling your best players to the Premier League’s elite.
It seems bizarre that Sullivan would promise Anderson he could leave when there hasn’t even been much transfer speculation surrounding him. You get the odd story regarding him, but this isn’t a Marko Arnautovic in January kind of situation.
Still, this is enough to get Hammers supporters worried, that’s for sure. Anderson is inconsistent, granted, but he’s shown enough this campaign to suggest he can be a big player for the club for many years – if he stays where he is.
If West Ham have any ambition whatsoever they shouldn’t be agreeing that their players can leave when a top club comes in for them, that’s not how you progress forward.
This is worrying in the extreme for the Hammers faithful, and all they can do now is hope that no top six club come in for the mercurial Brazilian any time soon.
