The Evening Standard reports that West Ham have upped their bid for Burney's James Tarkowski to £27 million. I can't see it's that likely he'll want to come to East London. Tarkowski is playing for a well-organised club with a stable board, happy fans and a good manager and in a team that finished much higher than West Ham. He might move for the money of course, but what's clear is that the board have handed the advantage to Burnley in negotiations.
The Clarets know that Sullivan and Gold are now desperate to make a signing to subdue a players' mutiny and buy off the fans. He's a good player and would improve the defence, but if we do get Tarkowski we're going to end up paying over the odds at £30 million plus. A better approach would be to buy a promising young defender from the Championship or abroad or perhaps try to tempt Lewis Dunk from Brighton, who only finished one place above the Hammers.
It would have been far better to have kept Diangana and not display to the world that the players are disillusioned with the board, and possibly David Moyes if he supported the sale. Morale is really low to judge by the 5-3 Betway Cup loss to Bournemouth. While the board seem to have no knowledge that West Ham fans love home-grown talent and only accept the sale of Academy products when they go to a big club, not West Brom. Diangana only played 16 times for the Hammers and impressing in the Championship is different to the PL — but now we'll never know if would have fulfilled his potential for WHU. The upset this transfer has caused risks turning West Ham into relegation candidates when we should have been looking at a mid-table finish.
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There's no direct quote on Grady in the Sunday Times interview with Moyes, but it does say this:
"Moyes would have preferred Grady Diangana, 22, who was sold to West Bromwich Albion for £18 million, and Jeremy Ngakia, who turns 20 on Monday and joined Watford on a free transfer last month, to have remained at the club — though understands the need to generate funds for signings, and older stars accrued by Pellegrini are proving hard to offload.!
Sounds like Diangana was sold over his head. Though if he were to resign in protest like Curbishley did over the sale of McCartney then he might not work again...
Last time we had billionaire owners, they were Icelandic...so who's making an offer to Gold and Sullivan? No-one so far...
AND another thing! Why weren't we signing Jamal Lewis for 15-20 mill as left back? Unless we did try and he preferred the Geordies..
Good point about Jamal Lewis as he was certainly cheaper than Tarkowski. He was part of a pretty ropey defence at Norwich mind... but meant to be a promising young player.
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