West Ham United, we are told, are making no decisions on player contracts or recruitment until their precarious Premier League position is resolved one way or the other. Players, board, management are all focussed on staying in the top flight and the words are carefully manicured to reflect this. Quite right too.
Facing facts, and with still a 50% chance – plus- of being condemned to falling through the Championship trapdoor, the sharks are already circling and considering picking off the prime of the West Ham squad.
Mateus Fernandes, having just graduated to the Portuguese international squad, is garnering interest from Manchester United several months before West Ham’s relegation is even decided. According to journalist Ben Jacobs, Fernandes is already front and centre of their summer plans:
“Yeah, I think there’s a possibility he (Fernandes) leaves West Ham, obviously, because if they go down, then definitely (he is) tough to keep,” Ben Jacobs told The United Stand.
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And there is some appreciation, I’m told, by Jason Wilcox, [Manchester United’s Director of Football] and he falls into the same category as Joao Gomes, to my knowledge, where Man United have run some data, they’ve had a few cursory conversations, but it’s just really important to stress at this stage in particular, a few months out from the summer, if Jason Wilcox and Christopher Vivell [Director of Recruitment] were not speaking to a hundred players’ camps, they wouldn’t be doing their job.
“So, part of it is just about understanding direction of travel, merry-go-round movement, market opportunities if a team goes down. So there have been some internal conversations about players like Joao Gomes, Mateus Fernandes..”
West Ham fans will be fervently hoping that the Hammers can pick up that magical ten points – plus- in their remaining seven games to render all the Manchester United ground work redundant and hang onto their young talent for a couple more years.
There’s a whole other argument to be had if the Irons DO survive – about how the board fund their huge losses going forward – but that’s a conversation for another day once West Ham’s league status is confirmed. Can’t see supporters taking kindly to the club pulling off the ‘great escape 2.0‘ and then flogging off its prime assets to pay for the board’s lack of desire to put their hands in their pockets.