The sharp-shooting £25m striker who could have to choose between Aston Villa & West Ham

The season may be well underway and the transfer window long closed, but Premier League teams are already planning their business for next year – and that includes Aston Villa and West Ham United, who have both been linked with a bid for a La Liga striker who scored 13 goals last season and put himself firmly on the Spanish football map.

At least, that’s according to a report from Caught Offside, who claimed this week that the two clubs are keeping tabs on Hugo Duro, a 24-year-old centre-forward who is one of the few players to have emerged with credit from a challenging couple of years at Valencia, a falling giant of the Spanish game who seem set to flirt with relegation once more this season.

Apparently West Ham and Villa are locked in a “fierce battle” to sign the striker, who is speculated to be available for a fee in the region of €25-30m (£20-25m). But would he be worth that sort of cash – and which side would make more sense as a destination for a player like Duro?

Anyone looking up Duro’s statistics without seeing him play will likely be deeply underwhelmed. His 13 goals in 39 matches last season – a one-in-three hit rate – is respectable enough, but his career numbers are pretty modest (26 games in 110 matches since signing for Valencia back in 2021) and he doesn’t really contribute all that much elsewhere, at least on a spreadsheet.

He isn’t a creative force, for instance, generating a measly 1.52 shooting opportunities every 90 minutes over the last year, which is perhaps why he only has five career league assists to his name. Nor is he a great technician, with a poor passing completion percentage and a low success rate on the dribble. He doesn’t force too many turnovers. He isn’t a hugely physical player and while he’s strong and stocky enough, he isn’t a towering figure (he’s listed between 5’10” and 6’0” by various sources) or a great aerial threat or hold-up man.

If you only look at the raw numbers, in other words, he doesn’t look much like a £25m player. But there’s a reason that at least two Premier League teams could be considering a bid for him – because he has some of the most important attributes a forward can have. He’s superb at finding space, and he knows where the net is.

The development of Duro’s off-ball movement is the reason he’s started scoring at a very decent clip. He doesn’t have truly elite acceleration but he has developed the knack of finding a half-yard out of nowhere and suddenly leaving his marker for dead at the last moment. Watching his goals in Spain, it’s the same story time and again – a sudden burst of movement, a defender left trailing, and a composed finish. He especially likes to lift the ball deftly over the goalkeeper, and does it quite beautifully.

Essentially, Duro is a ‘fox in the box’ style of striker who may well score quite a few more than he does given the service. One in three is not a world-class scoring rate, but it must be taken into account that he is playing for a poor team that are struggling to generate chances. The rate at which Duro converts expected goals and shooting positions into goals is genuinely impressive, and hints that he may well score rather more given better service.

A solid comparison might be with new Bournemouth striker Evanilson, who has a similar playing style. The Brazilian has only just scored his first goal for his new club, but if you have a dynamic attack around a player like that which can feed them chances, then goals will typically flow with regularity.

Both Aston Villa and West Ham play with midfielders and wingers who can get close to the striker and make runs which pull defenders away to generate even more space, and who try to create chances close to the box with quick passes and crosses. It’s a style of chance creation which makes perfect use of a player like Duro who is at his best quickly latching on to short-range passes into the area. In other words, there’s a reason that both teams are taking a look.

West Ham’s need for a striker is probably greater, however. Niclas Füllkrug is a fine number nine but injuries have hampered him so far and regardless of how well he gets on, West Ham’s only other options are Michail Antonio and Danny Ings, ageing strikers which the club have been trying to move on for a while, without success. Both are out of contract at the end of the season, and Duro could fill the void in the squad.

Villa, for their part, don’t really need Duro right now, but still harbour doubts over the future of Jhon Durán, who was reportedly bucking for a move over the summer in order to get more first-team football – a desire that will likely have intensified given his recent goal-scoring form. If both Watkins and the Colombian are still in place in a year’s time, Duro wouldn’t be a necessary purchase, but the odds on that aren’t necessarily all that favourable.

In short, either side makes a fair amount of sense as a destination for Duro, who could well become even cheaper if Valencia finally succumb to the relegation campaign they’ve been threatening for a while now. He’s sharp, hard to mark and a cool finisher, and as long as you have a dynamic attack around him who can do the heavy lifting when it comes to the approach play, then he’d likely make a very strong signing. Aston Villa and West Ham both fit the bill, at least on paper – let’s just see if either end up making a move.