West Ham’s candid appraisal of Jadon Sancho’s short-lived transfer negotiations with West Ham has taken on something of a weird turn.
Yesterday, we covered a report from Hammers News, which quoted a club spokesman on the subject of Sancho: “Rightly or wrongly, we’ve heard he can be difficult – we don’t want that kind of thing.”
However, C&H has since got a little more meat on the bone, both from a club source and from the side of Sancho, who is understandably keen to clear his name.
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Our understanding of the situation is that Sancho was offered to West Ham by an intermediary representing Manchester United. The deal at the time was described as “affordable” due to the fact that Mohammed Kudus would have moved to Old Trafford as part of the transfer.
Hammers manager Graham Potter was informed of the offer but was reluctant to sanction the deal, particularly given there was a 48-hour deadline. Potter instructed Kyle Macaulay to use his contacts at Chelsea to do some due diligence on the player’s character. Understandably, West Ham were concerned about why Chelsea were willing to pay a £5m penalty to return him to Old Trafford.
There was also a question as to why Manchester United were looking to offload the player on the cheap.
Jadon Sancho-Transfer-Manchester United-West Ham
West Ham rejected Man U’s Sancho offer
At that point, it was reported back that there had been an issue with Sancho’s timekeeping at Chelsea. This was enough for the Hammers to decide not to proceed with the deal, end of story… until now.
Because C&H have spoken to a representative of the player, who has hit back at suggestions he can be difficult and struggles with timekeeping.
“Jadon Sancho is an excellent professional. Do you think Dortmund would continually try to re-sign him if he wasn’t?” was the response from our source.
“As for timekeeping, he was late for training at Cobham ONCE, and so were about eight of the players. There were roadworks at Wisley, and the M25 was shut. Everyone had trouble getting in that day.”
Explosive stuff, not that any of it matters because he won’t sign for West Ham anyway. Because, despite all of the back and forth, the most important factor was that Graham Potter didn’t fancy him and, to quote the club, “wanted a different type of player.”