West Ham United must convince Amadou Onana to lower wage demands after bid accepted
West Ham have had a bid of £35m plus bonuses accepted for Belgian international Amadou Onana, but face a challenge in agreeing personal terms.
That’s according to ExWHUemployee, who has been on top of this deal from the very start and reported earlier this week that David Moyes was to ask the board to get a fee agreed.
That’s now been done with Lille accepting an offer that was submitted recently, but the player’s representatives are said to want high wages for a player who has less than 60 senior appearances in his career so far.
West Ham want to convince them to fall in line with the club’s current wage structure which could be difficult as Onana is seen as his agencies top star.
The agent knows there is a lot of interest in the player and if he doesn’t move this summer he could move at a later date with that interest still remaining, where he could get himself a bigger deal if West Ham won’t up their offer.
Challenge
It’s rare that a football transfer these days has personal terms holding the deal up as clubs usually get that done before dealing with the club.
But it seems as though West Ham have been more traditional in their approach this time around and it may have cost them valuable time in signing a midfielder.
Onana has emerged as the priority target for the midfield after the retirement of Mark Noble and end of Alex Kral’s loan spell and that’s why a big fee has been committed to getting it done.
But if the player isn’t willing to lower his demands and fall in line with the wage structure at the club, then it would all be for nothing.
We already know the structure won’t be broken for anyone not named Declan Rice, as we saw with Jesse Lingard, so fingers crossed this is just posturing and the two parties can come to an agreement quickly to stop this dragging on.