By Louis Nixon
**Fabrizio Romano has revealed the Hammers hold a long-standing interest in Manchester United midfielder Kobbie Mainoo.**
Romano has confirmed that West Ham has held an interest in securing Mainoo on a six-month loan and supposedly promised a guaranteed starting spot, seeing as the Manchester United midfielder is hoping to get into the World Cup 2026 squad, and his way of achieving that would be regularly playing elsewhere, as Ruben Amorim uses the Englishman as a substitute player.
Whilst the prospect of having one of the most promising young English players at West Ham is enticing, it does have to make you question who he’d replace within the starting squad. Due to the nature of his position, you’d presume that it would mean one of Fernandes or Potts would have to be dropped in order to fulfil the starting spot requirement for the loan to happen.
Additionally, Manchester United have refused to accept a buy option of any sort, so the idea to sign Mainoo for the future is completely out the window, meaning the most we’d have him for would be until the end of the season.
Kobbie Mainoo has the potential to be one of the highest-rated midfielders in the Premier League, but the temporary gain that we’d achieve would ultimately cause us pain. We would have to remove one of Potts and Fernandes, which postpones their further developments, whilst also knowing that we wouldn’t have a chance of signing Mainoo, seeing as Manchester United and Amorim refuse to let that happen.
This loan deal would simply help get Manchester United out of hot water. The only way a deal could possibly fathom a benefit for the Hammers would be a buy option to be included, as if he were to perform very well, there’d be a chance we could actually sign him… we all know what happened from our last United loan!