West Ham United face new Leeds United rival for £15m Manchester City defender Taylor Harwood-Bellis
West Ham are now facing competition from Leeds United as well as Fulham in their pursuit of Taylor Harwood-Bellis from Manchester City, Alan Nixon reports.
The £15million-rated 21-year-old is highly sought-after having captained England under-21s to European glory over the summer, after an excellent campaign on loan at Burnley that led to promotion.
He only has a year left on his deal at the Etihad but City are reportedly refusing to budge on the asking price, and now the Whites have joined the race amid a lack of progress on a move.
Tutto Mercato Web had reported on 22 July that a West Ham deal for the young centre-back was “almost done” and that “white smoke” could be as little as hours away.
But with nothing sealed since Nixon now reports on 30 July via Patreon that “progress is slowing down dramatically” because City aren’t willing to reduce the fee for the “classy” defender despite him not yet starting a Premier League game.
Same old story
West Ham weren’t exactly efficient with last summer’s transfer business and it ultimately cost them as late arrivals struggled to adapt quickly.
David Moyes nearly lost his job as the Irons blundered through a Premier League season that looked more like ending in relegation than challenging for the Champions League places as hoped.
But the club did at least manage to get some business tied up before the season started 12 months ago, yet this time around the sum of the activity is the long-awaited sale of Declan Rice.
Now, amid clashes between David Moyes and Tim Steidten and a scattergun transfer policy that has seen offers made for various targets but few in actual danger of getting over the line, it unfortunately it doesn’t come as much of a surprise for another pursuit to apparently become badly bogged down.
On paper Harwood-Bellis looks like a prime candidate to step up to the Premier League now, but he is admittedly unproven at this level.
The fee is perhaps a bit steep for a player in that situation with just a year left, but City can frankly afford to hold out just like the Irons did for Rice, because there are other interested teams and they are hardly strapped for cash.
West Ham shouldn’t rush into things blindly, but with the season about to start they have to decide one way or another on Harwood-Bellis, as with many other options, and stop hovering around hoping to land on perfect value.
Either he’s worth the asking price or he isn’t, so a bid needs to go in with chance of success or they need to withdraw from the race and get serious in another one because the perfect outcome is probably no longer an option.
In other West Ham news, agents are “frustrated” at the “haphazard” and “underwhelming” Irons behaviour in the market this summer.