West Ham want to sign both Maxi Gómez and Salomón Rondón, while keeping Marko Arnautovic, according to ExWHUEmployee.
This is an exciting prospect for the Hammers, who have struggled to get one quality striker at times in recent years – let alone three at once.
Though it does also mean the club – and Manuel Pellegrini in particular – will need to perform a balancing act to get the trio enough minutes to keep them happy; with all three being their respective side’s starting striker last season, this could be a difficult task.
The easiest way that he could help keep as many of them happy as possible is to change the formation to one which would facilitate two strikers at one time – tailoring the partnership in each game based on form and the opposition being faced.
A good example of a formation which would allow this is the 4-1-2-1-2, with Declan Rice at the base, Felipe Anderson and Michail Antonio or Andriy Yarmolenko out wide and Pablo Fornals or Manuel Lanzini at the tip of the diamond.
As well as allowing two strikers to play at once, this would likely be beneficial to how the strikers would operate on the pitch, as they would get plenty of support from their fellow forward, the attacking midfielder and wide men.
The second way two of the three could be fitted into the starting line up is to have Marko Arnautovic on the right wing – with that position arguably having the weakest starting option across the Hammers’ front line.
However, it is moving into the central striker role which made Arnautovic such a prominent player for the Hammers, as he hadn’t scored a single goal from the wing in almost half a season of his maiden West Ham campaign, before the position change; with this in mind, Pellegrini may be wary of putting the Austrian back there.
There is certainly a dilemma in how to best utilise all three strikers if Gómez and Rondón do join, but it is a very good one to potentially have.
