West Ham flop Albian Ajeti insists he 'deserved to play more' at London Stadium after completing Celtic move

Frustrating year: Albian Ajeti failed to score once in his year-long stint at West Ham, though opportunities were few and far between
West Ham United FC via Getty Ima
George Flood13 August 2020

New Celtic striker Albian Ajeti feels he should have been given more opportunities to succeed at West Ham.

The Swiss international completed a £5million move to Glasgow earlier on Thursday, ending a miserable year-long stint in English football during which time he failed to score a single goal or even muster one shot on target.

However, Ajeti was restricted to just 12 total appearances across all competitions for West Ham following an £8m switch from FC Basel last summer as he sat firmly behind the likes of record signing Sebastien Haller and Michail Antonio in the pecking order under David Moyes and predecessor Manuel Pellegrini.

Only three of those outings came in 2020, with Ajeti's late substitute cameo in the 1-0 defeat by Burnley on July 8 representing his first Hammers appearance since January.

And the 23-year-old - who will look to form a prolific partnership with Odsonne Edouard in the Scottish Premiership - believes he was not handed a fair chance to prove his talents at London Stadium.

"Yes, to be fair I deserved to play more, I don't need to hide that. I deserved that," Ajeti said.

"But this is football, this is how it is. I am really happy now. What is gone is gone and I'm looking forward now.

"I just think I need to play and this is why I signed for Celtic."

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in