West Ham bid club record £27.1m for William Carvalho Jason Burt, chief football correspondent
10 AUGUST 2017 • 1:32PM
West Ham United have bid a club record ?30 million (£27.1m) for the highly-rated Sporting Lisbon midfielder William Carvalho.Club representatives are currently in Lisbon attempting to close the deal for the Portuguese international and negotiations have been going on for more than a week. Sporting are attempting to hold out for ?40m (£36.1m) but are aware that the 25-year-old is keen to finally move to the Premier League club.
Signing Carvalho would represent another huge coup for West Ham who have already signed Marko Arnautovic, for a club record fee that could rise to £24m, Javier Hernandez, Pablo Zabaleta and Joe Hart during this transfer window as manager Slaven Bilic re-shapes his side ahead of Sunday’s kick-off away to Manchester United.
It is not thought that West Ham will go as high as ?40m for Carvalho but talks remain positive between the two clubs and sources close to the deal are optimistic it can be done.The highly-rated midfielder, who has been linked to a number of big Premier League clubs in recent seasons, including Arsenal, is understood to be aware of the fact that he needs to move to further his career.
Carvalho is represented by Pere Guardiola, the brother of Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola and would be expected to go straight into the West Ham side as a holding midfielder.
Born in Angola, Carvalho has 37 caps for Portugal and was part of the squad that won Euro 2016. Bringing him in would complete Bilic’s transfer moves this summer with the manager aware that his team needs a high-quality addition in midfield.
If Carvalho is signed then West Ham, who have also signed 18-year-old Montenegro midfielder Sead Haksabanovic, will then concentrate on balancing their squad with Sofiane Feghouli due to leave and join Galatasaray while Robert Snodgrass may also go with Aston Villa having expressed an interest. In addition at least one more departure is expected.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/football/2017/08/10/west-ham-bid-club-record-271m-william-carvalho/