West Ham boss Slaven Bilic has given a short (and awesome) interview to Milan News on Friday.
The Croatian manager talked mostly about the transfer market, and revealed several targets who the Hammers were considering to sign this summer.
“But as we have shown with the new stadium and with the training centre, we intend to grow as a club. And in some cases, it was not ‘normal’ to be on our list if you saw where we were up to 2-3 years ago.
“That said, on our list there were Lacazette, Zaza, Bacca and Batshuayi. But I knew it would be difficult to buy them. In September last year we wanted Zaza but Juventus had no intention to sell him, then we laid eyes on Lacazette and then Bacca.
“But we weren’t the first choice of the Colombian. He was waiting for Arsenal or Atletico Madrid and then finally decided to stay at Milan, but we are very happy because we bought Zaza, who an year ago was our first choice.”
West Ham signed Simone Zaza from Juventus on an year-long loan for €5m, with a view to making the move permanent.
Bacca was given several opportunities to accept the West Ham move, but was keen to wait for a club who were playing in the Champions League. Milan had earmarked the money from their top scorer last season to fund other transfers, but can’t be too unhappy the player remained where he is.
Arsenal themselves were linked with moves for several strikers over the summer, common with most transfer windows, and in the end they recruited Lucas Perez from Deportivo La Coruna.
