Manchester City have put a £25m valuation on Kelechi Iheanacho and will battle the Hammers on the size of a buy back clause.
The Irons have revealed to ClaretandHugh they want a 50 percent clause inserted into any deal but media sources are claiming Pep Guardiola wants it set at 40 per cent.
However, the deal is on hold until a legal dispute with former agents is resolved but West Ham would need to break their transfer record of £20.7m to get their man.
Guardiola is ready to let him go but with such interest in a proven Premier League goalscorer who is still in the early stages of his career, City are insisting on the buy-back clause in order to cover themselves.
Leicester City are currently the 1/3 odds-ons favourite to beat the Hammers to the striker. The Irons are 7/4 to sign him a price of 6/1 is available for him to stay at City and 8/1 for him to join Everton.
So it’s an ‘On Demand’ clause? That’s effectively a paid loan, not a transfer, and I’d make the case that technically it could breach the FA’s third party ownership rules. If the player’s registration is held by one club, another shouldn’t be able to exert any influence over him, which clearly wouldn’t be the case.
If it was a case of ‘Right of First Refusal’ (City get to buy him back if we wanted to sell) I could understand.
Complicated old business, ain’t it?
That’s a very good point, TD. It stinks, and of all clubs, we should be staying away from such complicated deals. The idea that we can take the risk on developing him into a great player, just for City to swoop back in and take him back (does he even get a choice?) is ********. We should look elsewhere. I can’t believe he’s the only young, exciting striker in the entire world…
Leicester have 6 strikers already, Okazaki, Gray, Vardy, Slimani, Ulloa and Musa. If we lose out to them the alarm bells really will be sounding, as for 40% or 50% I couldn’t care less as I don’t think he is of a high enough quality or ever will be to return to Man City, In a team like ours I reckon he is at best a 15 goal a season player, to be honest I doubt we will get Giroud and I am pretty confident that Slimani is a perfect fit for us see if we can have an agreement with Leicester whereby we give them a free run at Iheanacho if they will sell us Gray and Slimani for a combined £40m. The other player we should go all in for is Joshua King from Bournemouth why hasn’t he been snapped up he is proven at PL level and has a lot of attributes to his game.