By Louis Nixon
**Niclas Füllkrug’s agent yesterday revealed the not-so-surprising news that it would “make sense” for the German to leave the club within the next two transfer windows.**
The club are apparently aware of this, and rumours suggest they would be happy to consider a loan or a swap deal for the veteran.
The 32-year-old joined West Ham for £24 million two summer transfer windows ago, and his relentless injuries have ultimately led him to where he is. He’s found himself being applauded numerous times due to the vocalisation he’s had and saying things straight in the tough times, but his applause were equally as criticised, seeing as he couldn’t quite ever translate his words to the performance on the pitch.
His agent, Thomas Wirth, recently went on a business podcast in which he said, “I think it might make sense to make a change… in retrospect, you have to say the transfer didn’t work. There’s no sugarcoating it.”
And I have to say, I’ve got to agree with the agent, I think it certainly is the time to make a change seeing as despite a few glimmers of success.
Füllkrug isn’t going to be the striker who can level up our team seeing as he’s 32, persistently injured, and even whilst fit he’s not a ‘game-changing’ player that we can consistently rely on.
The sale or swap aspects of the Füllkrug deal won’t be pretty either. We’ll be desperate to get him off the wage bill, and we’ll also happily accept a fee that is nowhere near the amount we paid… in fact, I doubt we’ll even get half!
A fee in the region of £8-10 million is likely to be expected from an array of Bundesliga clubs and it’s best to close this chapter and forget about it. Once again, a striker who’s not been able to work at West Ham and signing what we knew was an injury-prone older attacker has come back to bite us…
It’s back to the drawing board and the right time to close a chapter for a forward who’s scored 3 goals in 27 matches, which equates to a goal every 9 matches, or a small fee of £8 million per goal.