An article by Ken Dyer, in the Evening Standard, purports to reveal the terms that Sporting are asking to allow Carvalho to move to the London Stadium before the close of the current transfer window. Apparently they want a total package of £37.5m, with £20m up front and the remaining £15.5m payable early in 2018. It is understood that West Ham and Sporting are now £5m apart in their valuation of the player, with West Ham’s currently offering £32.5m, with a smaller sum up front and the balance settled on a instalment plan. While it is significant that Sporting have come down from their initial figure of £40m plus, they obviously want the £20m up front to allow them to invest in their own playing staff. And that could prove to be a red line for Sporting in making the deal happen.
Personal terms are not thought to be an obstacle, with a wages package already negotiated and agreed with Carvalho and his representatives. However, the length of the deadlocked negotiations has had one possibly unfortunate consequence. It has been suggested on social media that Conte’s Chelsea may now be taking an interest in signing Carvalho. Whether this is just speculation remains to be seen, but Sporting will potentially regard that as a god send, the presence of two PL clubs bidding against each other and pushing the price up. The floating of Chelsea’s rumoured interest could, however, just be a tactic by Sporting to pressurize West Ham in to agreeing a deal on their preferred terms. We shall see?
Elsewhere, both Joe Hart and Arron Cresswell have received call ups to Gareth Southgate’s latest England squad. However, there is no place for Antonio, who is currently just returning from a 4 month injury lay off. This international break has probably come a bit too early for Antonio, but I am sure that he will be selected again in the not too distant future, as Southgate appears to be a fan of the player. With regard to Hart, there were stories in the press recently that Southgate was considering dropping him to the bench in favour of Jack Butland. Typical, we have the England No.1 at the club and thou and behold the England Manager suddenly decides to demote him! It is a good job we Hammers fan are not paranoid or in to conspiracy theories.
Talking of the media, it appears that we are their favourite ‘crisis club’ again this season. So far, we have had constant speculation about Bilic being replaced and Lanzini leaving for Liverpool. More recently there have been stories concerning the alleged sale of Sakho to Lazio and loan of Carroll to Newcastle Utd. In the same vein, it was significant that Sky Sports selected the Cup game with Cheltenham as a featured match, no doubt hoping for a cup upset and more crisis talk. Well, they were disappointed last night, as the Hammers put in an efficient display in obtaining a fairly easy 0-2 victory. In short, they just did enough to ease past the opposition and it was very professional the way they went about it. For my part, I agree with Bilic, we just needed the win and a clean sheet. In the latter respect, hats off to the old war horse, James Collins, who put in a very solid and masterful performance at centre-back. Obviously, we have achieved our prime objective by qualifying for Round 3 of the competition, and a decent home tie against Bolton, but hopefully collateral bonuses will emerge in terms of improved match fitness (particularly for the likes of Sakho returning from a long lay off), greater understanding/cohesion in our forward play and the heightened confidence/team morale that naturally comes with winning matches and keeping clean sheets.
Indeed, lets also hope that it sets us up nicely for six points from the next two PL matches against Newcastle Utd away and Huddersfield Town at home. Newcastle Utd look very much out of sorts (lets hope they stay that way for remainder of this week!) and now could be a very good time to play them. While Huddersfield have had a good start to life in the PL, but one wonders how long they can sustain the results that they have gained to date. Kouyate should feature at St James Park and Lanzini will likely be back by the time we take on Huddersfield.
So, it is all to play for and I can see us coming away with a solid 1-2 win up in the north-east this Saturday. That would take some pressure off and set us up nicely to use the international break to get Lanzini fit and prepare for the Huddersfield game. The PL programme is a marathon and we have only completed a 800m, at best, so far this season. The good thing about marathons is that slow starts are not necessary that damaging, as long as you pick up the pace within a decent time-frame. I am confident that we can do that over the coming two matches, scupper all the crisis club talk and start having, what should prove to be, a very good season. COYI!
SJ. Chandos.