West Ham midfielder Any Irving is expected to leave the club in January, Claret & Hugh has learnt this evening.
The Scottish midfielder had been set to depart in the summer, only for then-manager Graham Potter to place a prohibitive price tag on him. This came after interest from both Celtic and Rangers, with the former offering a loan deal including a £2 million option to buy.
As Claret & Hugh reported at the time, Potter instructed West Ham not to accept anything below £3 million—effectively ending Old Firm interest. Irving was also given some encouragement by the manager, who pledged to offer him more game time.
Irving has no future at West Ham under Espirito Santo
That promise was enough to persuade the player to reject a second offer from Wrexham, who had been trying to get close to the midfielder’s wage demands.
Nuno Has No Plans for Irving
However, Claret & Hugh has now been informed that a January deal is very much back on—and if Celtic were to return with interest, they’d have a far better chance this time around.
Our transfer source revealed:
“West Ham were looking to offload Álvarez, Rodrigues and Irving in the summer, and the deals with Celtic and Wrexham were close.”
“Nuno doesn’t want to keep Irving and won’t use him either. He’s not on big wages, so a deal should happen.”
With Freddie Potts seemingly set to enjoy more first-team minutes, Irving has dropped further down the pecking order. If he wants to return to regular football after almost 18 months of inactivity, a transfer in January now looks like his only realistic option.
3 million is not prohibitive for a full Scottish international. That said we’re wasting money paying the wages of someone who only gets up to10 minutes of action in most games.
If true, this makes the whole “who decides” question even more confusing. Was Potter (or other managers), in such control of the transfer/wage budget that Sullivan can’t or won’t overrule a difference of £1m? That would be in stark contrast to other stories of involvement.
Or is it just the familiar scapegoat exercise to blame Potter (… if it weren’t for him and the 2m we probably would have had our 20+ goal striker 😉 ).
Nope. He had his chance.