Former West Ham manager Slaven Bilic has lifted the lid on the infamous exit of Dimitri Payet from the club.
The Croatian boss was in charge of the Hammers in 2017 where the fan favourite was frozen out of the squad as he looked to force an exit, eventually returning to France to join a Marseille side he had left to come to the Premier League in 2015.
Payet ’s behaviour tarnished the reputation he had in the eyes of some supporters but Bilic admitted he does not blame the France international, adding that he felt the electric midfielder was too good for the Hammers.
“He had a great season, his first season, but then in the next season he never caused problems, he was a very quiet guy, but in his first season he was always joking with the players, always in a good mood and everything, but it’s a situation where you couldn’t blame anyone,” he told BT Sport.
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“You couldn’t blame him. I asked the chairman ‘can I do this?’ and he said yes, I had to draw the line because the players started to wonder what they had done wrong. I tried to explain to the chairman that when it comes to a situation where one player is too good for the club, like he was, I could understand him.
“In France, with the national team, he talks and they say ‘who are you playing in the Champions League?’, maybe they play against each other, and he’s at West Ham. So I understood him.
“I told the chairman, unfortunately nowadays in football you have two solutions to solve that problem. One is that every year you give him a new contract, give him a little bit more and he’s happy, or sell him. The third solution, which we were doing, was saying ‘no, you have a contract, you have to stay’.
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“To give credit to the chairman, he gave him a new contract only six months after he came to the club so he didn’t want to do it again. But all I said was ‘then let’s sell him’.
“When somebody asks me about Dimitri Payet, I don’t think about that little bit of negativity. I think about the year and a half where he gave us enormous joy and so many good performances.”
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