With only 20 days left of the summer transfer window to go, West Ham don’t have long to conclude their incoming and outgoing business.
Arguably, David Moyes and Tim Steidten need to do a lot more of the former rather than the latter, however, there appears to be a tacit acknowledgment that at least one more player will be leaving the club ahead of the September 1 cut-off.
The Hammers record signing, Lucas Paqueta, is believed to have had his head turned by Pep Guardiola and Manchester City and, according to The Guardian (subscription required), the east Londoners are losing hope of being able to keep the exciting Brazilian.
After seeing captain Declan Rice and another big-name signing in Gianluca Scamacca move on the east Londoners can well do without Paqueta going too, though the flip side of that argument is there’s not really too much point in keeping an unhappy player.
Particularly if the Hammers can engineer the deal to their advantage.
It’s believed that they will be demanding somewhere between the £70m offer that they already turned down from City and the £85m clause in the player’s contract that doesn’t officially come into force until 2024.
The Guardian also suggest that City’s exciting youngster, Cole Palmer, is of interest to Moyes and there could be a deal to be done there which would, in some way, alleviate the loss of Paqueta.