**West Ham have confirmed the signing of Joel Piroe, as Troy Parrott closes in on a move to Real Betis**.
This morning, the Hammers sealed a season-long-loan move with an obligation to buy for Leeds forward Joel Piroe.
The fee hasn’t yet been disclosed officially, but the total price including loan fee and obligation to buy is rumoured to be £12 million or under, not a bad fee at all for what is a proven Championship striker.
He has scoring 73 goals in four seasons, two at Swansea City and two at Leeds United. No player has scored more goals in the Championship than Piroe since his debut in 21/22.
I think everyone is expecting him to be good for us in the Championship and score double figures goals. However, the problem with the signing is the lack of ambition beyond the Championship.
He’s proven to be not good enough for the Premier League. That might be slightly harsh, he’s only had one crack at it, and he only played 246 minutes last season, but in those minutes he looked really poor. He didn’t play much for a reason, he wasn’t good enough.
Troy Parrott isn’t proven in the Championship, in fact he wasn’t great at all when he’s played in the second tier.
But as a player, he has more potential, is a lot more suited to playing in the Premier League, is younger, homegrown, was Nuno and Koppen’s main target and he would’ve cost just £5 million more.
Parrott was exactly the type of striker we needed up front with Taty Castellanos. He’s god bags of energy, he runs in behind, he presses, he works hard. Piroe doesn’t do any of that. The Irishman with the Argentine in behind would’ve been a dream partnership.
Parrott is closing in on a move to Real Betis. The early rumours suggested Parrott was pushing for a move to the Hammers, but it’s unclear whether or not he preferred a move to Seville when Betis came in as they offer Champions League football.
Even if that was the case, we had well over a week of being the only club in for him, we had time to get the deal done but didn’t. The fact he was our top target and we didn’t push to sign him more is disappointing.
It isn’t quite the punchy and exciting striker signing we all wanted, however, we’ve got Piroe now, and we need to back him. He’s been excellent in the Championship before and there’s no reason why he can’t do the same again in claret and blue.
If he’s a key part of why we get promoted and he’s all-but useless in the Premier League like he was for Leeds last season I guess it would be worth it. The main goal is to get promoted, we’ll focus on the Premier League next summer if we achieve our goal.