With West Ham looking likely to sell their captain, Declan Rice, this season as a bare minimum, David Moyes will need to strengthen his squad, and one of the Hammers targets could be sold because of his current club’s Financial Fair Play situation.
Having just won the Europa Conference League final and thereby earning automatic qualification into next season’s Europa League, Moyes certainly won’t want to change things too much.
However, the expected funds that a Rice sale would bring in – The Telegraph (subscription required) suggested a fee around the £92m mark – would allow significant rebuilding in certain areas of the squad.
According to The Athletic (subscription required), the Hammers face competition from Everton and Aston Villa for one of their targets.
Steve Cooper would surely be loathe to lose the talents of Brennan Johnson, though it appears that FFP is going to start to bite every club hard, not just Nottingham Forest.
A reported £30m offer from Brentford clearly hasn’t interested the Midlands-based club, and it remains to be seen if the east Londoners or any other parties are willing to significantly up that amount in order to sign the exciting 22-year-old.
It’s also worth speculating on the dangerous game that Forest appear to be playing at this point.
Whilst it’s understandable that they wouldn’t want to lose one of their best players, if he’s priced out of the market and then FFP forces the club into a sale in any event, his resale value would be much less than it is at present.