Why West Ham are the ideal fit for £50m striker amid Wolves and Fulham transfer interest

What next for Armando Broja? Less than a fortnight after he scored just his second goal of the season against Preston North End in the FA Cup third round – and less than a fortnight after Mauricio Pochettino offered public words of encouragement to the Albanian international – both The Athletic and The Daily Telegraph have reported that Chelsea are prepared to listen to transfer offers for the striker, with West Ham United, Wolverhampton Wanderers and Fulham listed as potential destinations.

Since that promising loan spell at Southampton a couple of seasons ago, the 22-year-old ha s struggled to establish himself at Chelsea. He has scored just three goals in the 35 games he has played since his stint on the south coast, and while injuries have played their part (he damaged his anterior cruciate ligament in December 2022), few would argue that he has hit the heights of which he had seemed capable.

Pochettino described Broja’s goal against Preston as “really important for him” and said his “potential is amazing – we’re talking about of the young strikers in England and Europe with the most potential.” Hardly the words of a man who expected his young charge to be heading towards the exit door within the next few weeks, but then recent developments around Conor Gallagher’s proposed transfer to Tottenham Hotspur strongly suggest that the Argentine does not have the control over transfers that he wanted.

Pochettino also had some sterner words for the Slough-born striker: “He needs to use this type of game to score and to feel the net and to improve. Improve not only in his fitness, but his body language also. He needs to step up and to go forward and to move. He needs to be more positive.”

It could be argued that he did just that in an improved (if still goalless) outing against Fulham on Saturday, but clearly it has not been enough to prevent Chelsea’s higher-ups from shopping him out. He now appears to be approaching a critical second act in his career at some pace. From Chelsea’s perspective, selling him makes sense. He has just one league goal this season and has not shown the lethal touch or consistency required to seriously compete with Nicolas Jackson, Christopher Nkunku, and whichever wildly expensive striker they inevitably buy next summer.

He’s also an academy product, which will cause any money earned from his sale to be seen as pure profit that can be spent elsewhere by the Premier League’s profit and sustainability rules. If Chelsea are seriously considering selling Gallagher or Levi Colwill to fund future purchases, selling Broja seems like a logical first step. The Telegraph’s report suggests that Chelsea hope to earn as much as £50m from selling him, which seems quite staggeringly optimistic, especially in January, but presumably there is a more feasible figure which could be reached and The Standard have suggested a fee in the £30-40m range as being more plausible.

So where should Broja go, and what does he need to develop into the fearsome forward he threatened to be back when he was with the Saints? The three clubs supposedly in the market for his signature are all teams who have been looking for a forward since the summer – Fulham still need to replace Aleksandar Mitrović, West Ham are keen to find younger replacements for Michail Antonio and Danny Ings, and while Matheus Cunha and Hwang Hee-Chan seem to have solved Wolves’ immediate need for goals they are still looking for warm bodies to fill the gaps left by Sasa Kalajdzic and Fábio Silva. Each are plausible and reasonable destinations who seem safe enough in the Premier League for the immediate future.

It seems fair to suggest that Broja needs to go to a club that plays to his strengths – his burst of pace, sharp movement and strong close dribbling – rather than to a side which wants him to operate as a classical number nine, holding the ball up or trying to get on the end of crosses. He may not be incapable of playing in such a way, but it makes more sense for him to play for a side that would want him to drop a little deeper to pick up the ball and try to beat men in front of him with his ball-carrying skills.

Making him and out-and-out central striker would also put the spotlight firmly on his finishing, an area in which he has struggled. He has generated just over two goals’ worth of xG in the Premier League so far this season, at a rate of one likely goal every five matches, but has scored just once, against Fulham back in October. While those numbers will likely improve with confidence and consistent playing time, there are no signs that he will become a 20-goal centre-forward if asked to play that way. Even when he was earning substantial and justified praise at Southampton, he only scored six goals all season.

That might rule Fulham out, unless they see Broja as a wide forward who could play on one side of Raúl Jiménez, which is a plausible scenario but arguably not one that addresses their biggest positional needs. Fulham are geared up to have a strong hold-up man playing in the middle and bringing their attacking midfielders into play, and that is not Broja’s strength.

West Ham and Wolves, by comparison, would seem like a better fit. Both play with narrower front threes with the wider forwards often looking to run on past a slightly deeper-set centre-forward, which should fit Broja pretty well positionally. If he struggled as a central striker, then he may also find a home in their respective systems as an inside forward – he can play in the role, but would not be a natural fit for a team which wanted the wide forwards to stick closer to the flanks as Fulham do under Marco Silva.

In terms of the needs of the two teams, West Ham probably have the more urgent need for a forward, with Saïd Benrahma increasingly likely to leave (probably for Lyon) and Antonio and Ings liable to follow. Wolves need depth quite badly, but between Cunha, Hwang and fellow forwards Pedro Neto and Pablo Sarabia, they have plenty of form players up front as it stands.

The question for either side, though, is not whether Broja broadly fits their needs – he does – but whether his recent poor form can be turned around. Is it a question of confidence, as Pochettino implied? Or is he simply not developing into the player many at Stamford Bridge hoped he would become? Even at the lowest price points suggested by the press, he would represent a pretty big gamble…