West Ham United want to sign Wolfsburg striker Josip Brekalo
West Ham United are ramping up their preparation for a big summer window by identifying Josip Brekalo as a potential signing, according to Calciomercato.
The 23-year-old has spent the season on loan at Torino from Wolfsburg and the Serie A side had the option to make the move permanent for just £8.4million but they chose not to activate that clause before the 15 May deadline.
That has opened the door for the Irons, along with Southampton, Eintracht Frankfurt and Sevilla, to line up and try to prize him away from the Bundesliga outfit.
The Croatian though would prefer a move to another Italian side after scoring seven goals in his first Serie A season but no club from that nation has yet made any kind of move for his services.
It’s thought that a similar price to the £8.4million in the original loan deal would be what any club trying to buy him would have to pay with his contract expiring next summer and Wolfsburg keen to cash in while they can.
Sub-par
Considering that the Hammers are a team that is now a regular challenger for European places in the Premier League, they should really be looking much higher in the transfer market than someone who can’t hit double figures as an attacker.
You can’t see how Brekalo would displace Jarrod Bowen on the right-hand side and even the likes of Said Benrahma and Pablo Fornals would be much preferred on the left.
David Moyes seems very keen to improve his wide areas, or the depth in those positions at least, but he has much more troubling positions to worry about.
We need a striker to challenge and take the workload off Michail Antonio primarily, followed by another centre-half and then maybe a central midfielder or two before we begin to look at wingers.
After a January of no new players, when it was really needed, this summer window has to go right if we want to maintain our position as a consistent top-six team for the foreseeable future.
In other West Ham news, one of the Hammers’ current wingers is set to be offloaded after being a “bitter disappointment” following his £28million move.
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