Manchester City set for new Lucas Paqueta bid to West Ham United as Fabrizio Romano shares transfer timeline update
Manchester City are “working on a new bid” to West Ham for Lucas Paqueta in the next 24 to 48 hours, according to Fabrizio Romano.
The Italian journalist reported via Twitter on Wednesday morning (16 August) that the next offer is set to be tabled by Friday at the latest, before Pep Guardiola’s side plan to push for Jeremy Doku from Rennes.
The Irons previously rejected a bid of £70million for their Brazilian star but have privately accepted that a deal is likely with the 25-year-old already having already verbally agreed personal terms.
West Ham have already sold Declan Rice to Arsenal in another huge deal worth £105million, while Gianluca Scamacca has returned to Serie A for around £27m more.
Braced
If this deal is getting done then for the Irons’ sake it would be better off being hurried along because they won’t be able to do much with £80m or £90m if it only gets committed to with a couple of days left in the window.
Losing Paqueta this summer wouldn’t have been in David Moyes’ plans on top of Rice, especially this late in the day, but it does stand to make the club a major profit after just one year.
Given things went in the opposite direction with Scamacca’s exit in the same timeframe this could be considered a relative success.
But since it has been such a mighty struggle to get incoming business done this year it certainly seems like one in the hand is worth two in the bush, as West Ham could feasibly replace Paqueta with a pair of strong options with the cash that is likely to come in, but confidence won’t be high that they actually make that into reality with two weeks left.
The club have already turned the Rice money into Edson Alvarez and James Ward-Prowse with a hefty chunk left over, but that process was torturous enough and had less time pressure to deal with.
Indications are that City are intent on landing Paqueta, and the long-term injury to Kevin De Bruyne will have only increased that, so the Irons surely need to be pushing hard to get at least one replacement lined up right now ready to go.
In other West Ham news, the Hammers are in loan-to-buy talks on another multimillion pound signing.