Slaven Bilic: Manuel Lanzini can fill the gap left by Dimitri Payet

The news that Dimitri Payet “doesn’t want to play for” West Ham anymore doesn’t really come as much of a surprise to anyone. Adrian was error prone at the start of the season and Bilic was not ready to stick with him. In fact, the midfielder has looked elsewhere nearly from the moment he touched down on English soil following his Euro 2016 exploits.

Earlier this week, French worldwide Payet told the club he no longer had an interest in pulling on their shirt and refused to play this weekend against Crystal Palace.

Giles believes that it will be impossible to convince Payet to stay. Payet certainly doesn’t have that type of worldwide reputation, but he is a French global. “We are not going to sell him”.

Should Arsenal be looking to act on Payet’s unhappiness?

As documented, Dimitri Payet is set to be omitted from the West Ham matchday squad – with Antonio also recovering from illness.

Payet has in the past spoken about his admiration for Arsenal and has never ruled out a transfer to North London.

Palace have floundered themselves throughout this campaign and hover dangerously one place above the relegation zone having failed to win any of their last six league matches.

Slaven Bilic’s side have earned 22 points from 20 league games this season, 10 fewer than they had at this stage last season.

The devaluation of the pound since the United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union means that Marseille can get somewhere near his current wage, while the incentive of spearheading a new and ambitious project is a unique selling point to the player.

On Thursday, Hammers boss Slaven Bilic revealed Payet wanted a move and would not be training with the first team until his attitude changes.

There are only so many clubs in the world that can afford a player like Hart’s wage packet and West Ham are one of them.

As far as West Ham are concerned, or at least as far as they’re letting on publicly, no deal has been agreed between The Hammers and Marseille.

“If that is a distraction for the players, and I am not sure that it is, then if we can take advantage of that then so be it”.

“Of course, we’re waiting to see the first actions of the new owners”, Payet told SFR.

The question now is where do things go from here?

Payet received a significant pay rise when he signed a new contract in February 2016 that runs until 2021.

“This team, the staff, we gave him everything, we were always there for him”. Don’t expect the player to leave on his own terms.