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Report: Villa set to swoop for Hammers ‘target’

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Aston Villa boss Dean Smith as being reported as wanting to launch a bid for his former Brentford striker Ollie Watkins.

The 24 years old was believed to have been a Hammers target earlier in the summer after the Bees failed to make the Premier League via the Championship play-off final.

The new report comes via The Sun and contains no real firm detail beyond the fact that the 24 year  old once played for Smith, so at this stage it’s probably best to remain cautious in what we believe.

It’s an easy link to make but we understand that Fulham too are interested whilst the Hammers boss David Moyes is now continuing to look for defenders.

The current plan is that the Hammers will use both Mikey Antonio and Seb Haller as their central strikers and use Andriy Yarmolenko in the role should injuries intervene.

The Hammers boss is an admirer of the Brentford hotshot but Moyes is determined to beef up at the back before looking to reinforce at the front.

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Hugh Southon is a lifelong Iron and the founding editor of ClaretandHugh. He is a national newspaper journalist of many years experience and was Bobby Moore's 'ghost' writer during the great man's lifetime. He describes ClaretandHugh as "the Hammers daily newspaper!"

Follow on Twitter @hughsouthon

10 comments

  • Hammerkip says:

    Cant quite believe what I’m reading…will use Antonio and haller with yarma as back up if they get injured…my god and we wonder why we have problems ….another struggle in the bottom half then..
    👍👍👍👍👏👏👏👏🤡

    • Mikey says:

      So you expect Ollie Watkins to sign for us as a back up striker to sit on the bench just in case our leading goal scorer Antonio, and our most expensive signing ever, forty five million man Haller get injured?

    • Hammerkip says:

      Wasnt talking about that ,was talking about getting by with no other striker signing.. with yarmalenko cover as back up striker …we all have our opinions ..your welcome to yours 😏

  • Dave says:

    Not sure why we keep being linked with people, we don’t have any money, despite every other club having money, seems we have been Covid harder than everyone else in the premier league.
    We will get a couple of loans and maybe offload a few more for large financial losses like we usually do on all our player sales.
    I expect we are waiting to see how much Chelsea come in for Rice, if we get £50m they’ll probably give the manager 15-20m and bank the rest. The West Ham way.
    The sooner these owners and Brady go the better, Moyes has little backing to improve the team.
    Haller, Anderson, Cresswell, Balbuena, Wilshire all looked exactly the same yesterday, slow, added nothing and struggled vs a championship team.
    A few injuries and another long season coming if these players are needed.

    • Hammerkip says:

      Got to agree with you,,2 weeks before season starts and not even a sensible bid ..its ridiculous. I want them gone now as well ,nothing against them but they are not going to take us anywhere….you can tell they dont wantvto give Moyes money and like you say plenty of signings being made, pretty goisctine to buy in fact but they are just using this as an excuse ,well more than any other prem team…infuriating

  • Tom says:

    We desperately need a LB and a RB. That is a minimum. 3 players have left already. After that we need a back up striker and if we can stretch to a CM as well, that would be good.

    Let Wilshere, Balbuena, Masuaku and Lanzini go.

  • Ban says:

    Don’t know what West Ham fans expect

    We have spent hundreds of millions on this team with little to show for it, and now a worldwide pandemic has occured fans want us to go and waste hundreds of millions again? Absolutely insane

    We don’t need Watkins, the guys has had 1 really good season in his career and we wanna spend £25mil on him? Thats more than Bowen who is younger and has had 3 unreal season in the championship , scoring more goals than Ollie while playing off the wings

    If Bowen cost £20mil, and before the pandemic, Watkins shouldn’t be a penny more than £15mil

  • mark wiggins says:

    My god it doesn’t sound like we can afford a tenner at the moment . I’m sorry Covid or not the owners need to back the manager . Got to stop this waiting for targets c**p and go buy some defenders first and foremost than look at attack. I don’t have a short memory & know BGS saved is financially when they took over but boy they also have not invested in the team properly. It’s about time to step up and stop the all teams are the same we’re skint because of COVId Rubbish . You’ve been made to look stupid when teams like palce stump up cash for Eze. It’s not like you can say there a bigger club FFS . Buy some decent defenders & back your manager .

  • mooro66uk says:

    I’m as frustrated as the rest but Palace sold Wan Bissaka for 50 million pounds last season and have only spent 20 million over the last 2 seasons. They had 30 million in cash left over for new players. West Ham have spent almost 180 million over the same time span.

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