West Ham have received an offer of €9 million from Sassuolo for midfielder Pedro Obiang, according to Gianluca Di Marzio.

There have been failed bids from Fiorentina and Bologna to bring the Equatorial Guinea international back to Serie A, but it is believed Sassuolo could manage to do just that.

West Ham currently have Declan Rice, Mark Noble, Carlos Sanchez and Josh Cullen who predominantly play in a holding midfield role, while Jack Wilshere can also fill in there, so the Hammers may have enough cover to let him go.

Obiang started 12 league matches last season, coming on for another 12, providing one assist for his teammates.

His game is mostly centred around defence and he made 1.7 tackles, 0.5 interceptions, 0.6 clearances and 0.4 blocks per game in 2018/19 (as per WhoScored).

With ExWHUEmployee having previously stated that Manuel Pellegrini plans to have Pablo Fornals and Manuel Lanzini in the same side, with Declan Rice - it means Obiang has the likes of Noble and Wilshere to contend with for a place as a back-up in the holding role.

Of these two, Noble's game is the closest to Obiang's, though he offered more going forward last season, as the club captain provided five goals and five assists.

Obiang only averaged 22.3 passes per game with an 80% pass success rate, while Noble made 48.6 passes with an accuracy 0f 85.3% - with Pellegrini putting a focus on the club's style of football, this would likely make Noble the more favourable option.

This comes despite Obiang bettering the Englishman in all of the aforementioned defensive stats, aside from interceptions.

It is difficult to see Obiang getting into the West Ham starting line up on a regular basis, so a €9 million deal would work well for both the club and player.

It would allow the Equatorial Guinea international to get more game time and return to Italy, while the Hammers receive extra funds for Pellegrini's overhaul. Indeed, Sky Sports reported back in May that the club were needing to offload fringe players to raise their own transfer budget so trying to get Obiang off the books would seemingly be useful on that front, especially after forking out £45m on Sebastien Haller.

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