West Ham battle host of PL clubs for £15m-rated Damsgaard – report
West Ham are lining up a bid for highly-rated Sampdoria star Mikkel Damsgaard but face heavy competition, according to the Daily Star.
The 20-year-old has announced himself on the scene this season with a series of impressive displays and looks to have caught the eye of a number of English clubs.
Despite David Moyes possessing a wealth of attacking midfield talent at the London Stadium it appears the Irons could be targeting a summer move for the winger.
The Daily Star report that the Irons have expressed an interest in the Denmark international but face competition from Premier League rivals Leeds United, Southampton and Tottenham Hotspur, as well as Italian giants Juventus.
After joining Sampdoria for £5.2million last summer the newspaper report that it will take a sum of around £15million to prise him away from the Genoa-based club.
Damsgaard moved to Italy from Danish side Nordsjaelland less than 12 months ago but if reports are to be believed he could already be moving on to bigger and better things.
Heading for stardom
Damsgaard looks like a diamond in the rough with some clear areas of his game to improve.
His 74% pass accuracy [Wyscout] in Serie A this season leaves a lot to be desired as does a cross success rate of 19.4%, showing his distribution is yet to reach full capacity.
However, at such a sprightly age there is time for him to work on this and in his first season in a top-five league, he is beginning to rack up some impressive numbers.
Four assists is an impressive tally for a young player who has only started 10 Serie A games with his 20 outings only spanning 1089 minutes [WhoScored] which works out as just over 12 full 90s.
Damsgaard has also scored twice and one of these was against Lazio who are fifth in the league and in the knock-out stages of the Champions League so he is clearly not a flat-track bully, further exemplified in the fact that two of his four assists have come against the Milan clubs, AC and Inter.
He is certainly a player for Irons fans to keep an eye on for the rest of the season with West Ham surely targeting young talent for the next campaign with the club containing a squad with the third-highest average age (27.8) in the Premier League [transfermarkt].
In other West Ham news, see our exclusive interview with Frank McAvennie on which Irons ace looked ‘bored’ v Manchester United.