Sky Sports reporter thinks West Ham United have made move to sign Memphis Depay on £200k-a-week
West Ham are the club from London who have been in contact with Barcelona over a deal to sign Dutch forward Memphis Depay, Anton Toloui believes.
The Sky Sports reporter thinks the unnamed side from the capital who the channel reported wanted to make the Camp Nou star their highest paid player is the Hammers because of the size of the contract.
It was reported on Thursday night (11 August) on Sky Sports News’ The Transfer Show by Kaveh Solhekol that a club was planning to offer the 28-year-old a £200,000-a-week contract, and after some speculation that it might be Chelsea Toloui now feels the Irons are the most likely.
Speaking live on The Transfer Show on Friday afternoon, in a clip posted to Football Daily’s Twitter account he said: “That’s West Ham. The more I think about it the more I think that sounds like West Ham.
“Because Harry Kane is going to be the highest paid player at Tottenham no matter what, because he’s that important to them.
“Chelsea, they’ve just signed Raheem Sterling who will probably be on a big wage and there are other players who have been there for a while under previous regimes who would have been paid well by the previous owner.
“So, West Ham?”
If the shoe fits
The logic is sound because although that is a massive amount of money it is certainly not going to make anybody the highest paid player at Stamford Bridge.
Spurs aren’t big spenders in the same way but Kane is reportedly already on £200,000-a-week and likely to sign another deal there [ESPN].
Arsenal are surely the only other likely candidate, but new signing Gabriel Jesus has to be a candidate to have already broken that barrier.
That leaves West Ham, who are splashing the cash this summer but balked at Amadou Onana’s wage demands which were not thought to even be as high as this.
It would be a fairly mad move to put months into the deal for the midfield sensation and then to let it fall at the last on salary negotiations, then to immediately go and try to sign a much older player for this much.
Depay is a quality forward who has come on a great deal since his failed spell at Manchester United, so if West Ham are trying to sign him there is reason for excitement, but it would certainly represent a scattergun approach to the last few weeks that wouldn’t make much sense.