Dimitri Payet is edging closer to leaving West Ham as the club have finally accepted that his departure is going to benefit all parties.
The playmaker’s shadow is looming over the weekend’s game against Crystal Palace, but it seems he’s already on the way out, at least if you believe L’Equipe’s claims that Marseille have made a formal offer.
As far as Slaven Bilic is concerned, the quicker Payet now leaves, the better. The Frenchman’s influence must be unsettling the camp, hence why he’s not even being permitted to take part in training following his strike.
As bizarre a saga as this is, it’s not an uncommon one in the Premier League – see West Brom’s treatment of Saido Berahino.
With Payet, the tragedy lies in its inevitability.
After a seventh-placed finish last season and the hopes of a Europa League campaign, a player of his calibre could recently have expected to push on.
The Euros only added to his prestige and value, and even at 29, West Ham could easily have made upwards of £30million.
Instead, the former Marseille man was kept in the name of ambition. Unfortunately, that seems to have been where the ambition ended.
False promises seem to have been made by the board about the class of players they would be bringing in. The wisdom, as put to Payet, was that he would no longer be the only top player in the dressing room.
And as time went on, and he was joined by Andre Ayew, Jonathan Calleri, and Simone Zaza, suddenly it became thoroughly understandable why he was disillusioned. Incidentally, the trio have one goal between them in the Premier League. Nice.
Too much, too soon.
The lesson of 2015/2016 was that clubs should absolutely wield ambition. It worked for Leicester, and even the lesser fairytales of West Ham and Southampton saw surprise entries into the top seven.
Where Brady, Sullivan, and Gold have gone horribly wrong, is that they have punched above their weight far too soon. Leicester’s project seemed to come from nowhere, but it took years of investment from billionaire owners, a change in their recruitment approach, and an emphasis on revamping the training facilities.
In East London, the London Stadium has been an unmitigated disaster, the transfer policy has been all wrong, and inevitably, results have dipped.
Slaven Bilic must be harbouring similar feelings to Payet, but there’s nothing he can do about it. There is no doubt that the star has acted completely inappropriately for a professional footballer, and is perhaps forgetting the faith the club showed in him when they took him on as a relative unknown 18 months ago.
Times change, though, and the board no longer have the wherewithal to adapt to Payet’s growing stock. This is going to be a harsh way for the fans to learn what should ultimately have been the owners’ lesson, and it remains to be seen whether they’ll ever learn it at all.
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