West Ham United ready to sell seven first-team players in mass January clear-out
West Ham are open to offers for as many as seven first-team players in the January transfer window, according to the Sunday Mirror.
In a report by Ryan Taylor for the newspaper’s print edition [17 December, page 74], it is claimed United are trying to raise funds through player sales.
Said Benrahma is said to be attracting interest from Lyon and teams in Saudi Arabia, while Thilo Kehrer is a target for Eintracht Frankfurt.
Danny Ings, Maxwel Cornet and Aaron Cresswell – the latter of whom has made over 300 appearances for the club – are also said to be up for sale, as are Ben Johnson and Pablo Fornals.
Deadwood
After a pretty hectic summer in which Declan Rice’s £105million sale helped the club bring in an array of big-money talents, January was always expected to be a quieter month.
David Moyes would no doubt like to bring in a new striker, while a new full-back would also be welcome, but it is likely that funds will first have to be freed up.
As highlighted by this report, there is plenty of deadwood at London Stadium at the moment, and it may well be that United can bring in some cash through those sales.
Some sales are more pressing than others, with Johnson set to become a free agent in six months’ time, which is also the case for long-serving Cresswell.
The Irons did well to freshen up the squad in the most recent window, and now the hope is that it will be even stronger come the end of January than it is at the start.
Should a player or two already be lined up, let’s hope these sales help fund the deals in order to push on in the second half of 2023-24.
In other West Brom news, the Irons can surely forget a move for one of their January targets after an update that has emerged in the past 24 hours.