The Daily Mail today claim that Brendan Rogers and Leciester City are interested in West Ham central defender Issa Diop.
Last month Wolves, Southampton and Crystal Palace are all allegedly keen to sign the 24-year-old Hammer as reported by FootMercato
West Ham signed the young defender for around £22 million from Toulouse in 2018.
He has been previously linked to Manchester United and Spurs mostly because of Jose Mourinho public admiration of the towering defender.
Liverpool have also been mentioned in dispatches.
However, they can all forget it as Issa Diop is not for sale and no formal bids have been received.
David Moyes is looking to strengthen the centre of defence by adding to the squad not weakening and would have precious little time to find a replacement even if the bid was financially attractive.
Diop remains in the manager’s plans for the coming Premier League season and Europa League campaign and made 21 appearances last season, 18 of those in the Premier League.
So we release Belbeanu without finding an equally competent replacement and are down to 3 CB’s.
And we sold Haller back in January and have had a single striker ever since
What we do have is a better back up keeper than Randolph but this hardly represents any squad strengthening
Of course we have to keep Diop
I’m sure that I have read, countless times that Balbuena walked, as he wasn’t going to get his wage hike because Moyes didn’t rate him that highly?
….and to get what we got for Haller, was genius as we were a striker down, “With” him at the club. Moyes has also stated before that Diop wasn’t for sale, so I guess nothing has changed.
If we could get two CBs in, I’d be happy to see Diop go. He’s often a liability, he’s not that young anymore and, so far, has been poor value for money versus Balbuena and Dawson. Another underwhelming Pellegrini signing.