OPINION
Shaun Derry clearly believes West Ham are capable of turning Bournemouth attacker Callum Wilson’s head with them reportedly being in pursuit of him.
Football Insider claimed on Saturday that the Hammers had made an approach for the 27-year-old forward, who is valued at £50million, and Derry was asked for his thoughts on West Ham wanting the attacker.
The talkSPORT 2 pundit and former QPR player shared that he thought West Ham were a bigger club than Bournemouth so Wilson would view a move as being a step up for him, and suggested that playing in London may tempt him to join Manuel Pellegrini’s side.
“I think it would be (it would be step up),” said Derry on talkSPORT (18:17, Saturday, July 6th).
“I think if you look from Callum Wilson’s mind, I think respectful Bournemouth have been brilliant in the Premier League, Eddie Howe has been a fantastic manager for them, but if a player wants to play at the highest level then, in my opinion, West Ham are a bigger footballer club, of course they, they’re a bigger football club than Bournemouth.
“Does he want to come and play in the capital? Is that going to be a defining kind of situation? Yeah, I do (if playing in London matters), I look at my time at QPR, a number of players came in because they wanted to play in London, they didn’t necessarily want to play for QPR, they wanted to play for a London club.”
Based on Derry’s remarks, he appears to think the Hammers would have no problem luring Wilson away from Bournemouth and that is an exciting claim to make.
This is because West Ham signing Wilson would be a fantastic piece of business.
Wilson scored 14 goals and assisted nine in the 30 Premier League appearances he made in his latest campaign and averaged a very impressive 2.2 shots per game as well as four Man of the Match awards (Source: WhoScored).
The Bournemouth attacker averaged a goal every 177 minutes (Source: BBC) which is better than Marko Arnautovic, who got a goal every 184 minutes to end as the Hammers’ top scorer in the 2018/19 campaign.
This means the Hammers would likely be more formidable going forward with Wilson, and if Derry thinks they could tempt him, which he implies; then West Ham should go all out in their pursuit of him.
