West Ham want Marseille midfielder Sanson, could offer Lanzini – report
West Ham are looking to complete a deal for Marseille midfielder Morgan Sanson as they look to boost the Irons’ midfield options, according to The Sun.
David Moyes’ central midfield options are thin on the ground with Declan Rice, Tomas Soucek and Mark Noble battling it out for two spaces in the team.
Some more options are needed in this area of the pitch and, according to The Sun’s report, the Hammers are keen on Sanson.
The Sun claim that Sanson, 26, has already rejected several approaches from the Irons with Marseille reportedly willing to allow the midfielder to leave as he only has 18 months remaining on his contract.
The report goes on to claim that West Ham could offer Manuel Lanzini in part-exchange for Sanson’s services with the attacker on high wages and currently offering little to Moyes’ efforts.
There is also reported interest from Newcastle but The Sun state that Sanson’s best chance of moving to the Premier League is a switch to the London Stadium.
Sanson has two goals and three assists in 11 Ligue 1 outings this season as he looks to be better at going forward than tracking back.
From his Wyscout heatmap for this season, you can see that he spends plenty of time in both halves while drifting across from the left to the right.
He looks to be spending more time in the opposition half which means Sanson could be an attacking asset for the Hammers but Moyes may be better off targeting a more defensive player.
With Noble’s career coming to an end it would make sense to compare the Hammers stalwart to Sanson to gauge if the Frenchman offers something similar.
This season Noble has won 60.7% of his defensive duels while Sanson has won only 51.9%, as per Wyscout.
This doesn’t suggest than Sanson offers as much defensively as Noble and with the Irons needing defensive midfielder cover it doesn’t seem that he is the right fit for West Ham.
With Sanson also not picking up an incredible number of goals or assists it does beg the question, why are we interested in him?
With poor transfers still a running theme at the club, though the situation has improved slightly recently, we think that we should pass on Sanson and increase our efforts in finding a proper Noble replacement.
In other West Ham news, the club have set a £70m asking price as Man United and Chelsea eye summer Rice deals