Quite what West Ham United have seen in Adama Traore to want to keep him at the club next season is up for debate.
While it’s certainly not as if Traore was terrible at West Ham United, it’s just he was frequently overlooked by Nuno Espirito Santo.
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Nuno, of course, worked with the Spaniard at Wolves and Hammers News understands that it was the Portuguese head coach who pushed for West Ham to sign him.
Still, his opening few months here in east London yielded little success, making the idea of wanting to keep him seem somewhat strange.
West Ham want to keep Traore but their stance is flawed
According to The Athletic, West Ham are hopeful that the 30-year-old stays at the club beyond the extent of the initial contract he signed in January.
That runs out at the end of June, and there has so far been no official update in regard to his future.
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The fact that Nuno only handed him one start when he was fit in the season just gone is telling. Not even when Crysencio Summerville was injured did Traore start all that often.
If he cannot get into the team then, why now? While the Championship is perhaps a lower level and the West Ham squad will almost certainly get weaker, so little about anything Traore did at the club suggests he’s ready for an arduous second tier campaign.
West Ham should be aiming higher than Traore
West Ham do not have time to waste in the Championship. They want a quick-fire promotion to the Premier League and, for that, they need reliability.
The former Barcelona youngster didn’t give them that after signing. While not to say he’s a bad player, West Ham fans were never truly convinced that Traore was a good signing.
As such, it seems bizarre to want to keep him at this stage. Merely hoping he can recapture the form he showed in the Championship almost ten years ago now does not really seem like much of a coherent strategy.
West Ham should be injecting fresh energy into the squad, not leaning on the past.
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