West Ham are determined to resist selling players this summer although interest remains high in Michail Antonio from Crystal Palace.
The versatile £7 million signing has struggled through his injury woes and is now seen more regularly on the bench than in the starting line up.
Despite making it clear that no decisions on comings and goings will be made until January, Pellegrini would prefer to keep his squad together but that may prove difficult in the case of Antonio.
Palace boss Roy Hodgson could come in with an offer of around £12 million which would test the board’s resolve, the background being that Antonio is attached to an agency with whom the Hammers and Palace does much business – Unique Sports Management.
But source close to the player and both clubs revealed to us on the ‘phone:”Ultimately of course it will be down to the manager but at this stage there is no desire to sell players any of the first team squad. However, there is interest in the player so we will see what January brings.”
Cresswell Carroll and Antonio all a must to sell and get in some quality young fit players
I thought he had started to show a bit more energy in recent games but if he did go and we replaced him with a better player than that would be fine. I would say that he is one of the few players we have that offer a physical threat, Arnie obviously does also and Rice to a degree so if we did replace him it should be with another powerhouse type player, ideally a box to box midfield threat.