Liverpool midfielder Adam Lallana is set to leave the club in the summer, and he is being backed to join West Ham United by retired striker, Kevin Phillips. Lallana has also been linked with a move to Leicester City, who are currently being managed by Brendan Rodgers, who signed the Englishman back when he was manager of Liverpool.
While speaking to Football Insider, Phillips said that the Hammers securing the signature of Adam Lallana would be a “smart signing”, but he does not see it happening as the player will most likely join forces with Rodgers at Leicester. He said, though, that Lallana should be the kind of player West Ham should sign “if they were to lose Declan Rice and Mark Noble”.
Lallana’s contract with the Premier League leaders expires in the summer, which will bring his six-year stay at Merseyside to an end.
Adam Lallana: How will he fit in?
West Ham United need a serious overhaul before the start of the 2020-21 season as they are a team that look out of sorts at the moment. Their big-money signings ahead of the 2019-20 season have failed to turn up, and they will have to go back to the drawing board.
One area in which they have been very weak is midfield, with 21-year-old Declan Rice being the only player to have put in consistent displays. The Hammers also need some creativity and goals from midfield, which they have not got a lot from the likes of Mark Noble, Carlos Sanchez, Jack Wilshere, or even attacking midfielders like Manuel Lanzini and Pablo Fornals.
Lallana would be a great fit in the West Ham midfield, and he could be the architect that gets the creative engine up and running. The Hammers have a few talented wide players in Andriy Yarmolenko, Felipe Anderson, and Robert Snodgrass, while January signing Jarrod Bowen is a young player with a lot of promise.
What the wide players have lacked is a player who can control the tempo of the game and pick them out with clever passes, which Adam Lallana is very capable of. Lallana would excel as a No. 10 or even if he drops deeper into a central midfield role in a three-man midfield. Lallana would be a very good signing for the Hammers and one that could add teeth to the side’s attack.
Having said that, the Hammers still need a solid signing in central defensive midfield to give some breathing space to Declan Rice and patching up that area of the pitch will mean giving the beleaguered defence some much-needed protection in the upcoming season.
