West Ham favorite Aston Villa ‘shows off’

Jhon Duran has been pushed to move from Aston Villa to West Ham as he will not replace Ollie Watkins as first-choice striker.

Since arriving from Chicago Fire for £14m in January 2023, he has made 49 appearances for the club. While this shows confidence from Unai Emery, just 10 of those have made the starting XI and 1,229 minutes in total averages out to around 25 minutes per outing for the Colombian.

At the age of 20, Duran is still a developing player at Villa as he acts as Ollie Watkins’ understudy. The £28million summer 2020 signing was not to be replaced last campaign either, after finishing the year as the Premier League’s top goalscorer with 19 goals and 13 assists.

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This has led to transfer speculation surrounding the Colombian, who has distanced himself from the talks as he competes in this year’s Copa America. Early interest came from Chelsea, then more recently from West Ham, and Frank McAvennie says a move to East London would suit Duran because of the game time available.

“He’s not coming into the Aston Villa team before Ollie Watkins, that’s for sure,” the former striker, who featured 122 times for the Hammers and three times for Villa, told West Ham Zone.

“I have no problem with that. I think if he gets more playing time at West Ham, I’m excited about that because if (Michail) Antonio gets injured and they put (Jarrod) Bowen up, Bowen wants to play on the pitch. wing.

“Players like Duran are seeing it happen, Ollie Watkins is one heck of a player who won’t be giving up his jersey easily.”

Compared to Villa, who have their striker situation locked up for the time being, West Ham are a club seemingly in need of reinforcements in their forward line. New manager Julen Lopetegui’s only two options are club goalscorer Antonio, now 34, and former Villa man Danny Ings, now 31.

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