West Ham turned down Renato Sanches and Grzegorz Krychowiak because Slaven Bilic is 'happy with his squad'
Co-owner's revelation comes as pressure mounts on manager following three defeats in three games for Hammers
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Your support makes all the difference.West Ham could have signed Renato Sanches and Grzegorz Krychowiak this summer but Slaven Bilic said he was happy with his squad, the club’s co-owner David Sullivan has revealed.
The pair have been widely hailed as impressive coups for the two clubs they eventually signed for with Sanches, the Portuguese international, joining Swansea City on loan from Bayern Munich and Polish midfielder Krychowiak moving to West Brom from PSG.
“[They] were both offered to the manager before their switches elsewhere, but he told us that he is happy with the squad he has,” Sullivan told the club’s website.
“As a board we are behind Slaven, and he believes he has the tools to turn around our form and rectify our disappointing start to the season.”
West Ham have suffered a shambolic start to the season, losing their opening three games including a 3-0 defeat to newly-promoted Newcastle.
The club made big name signings in the shape of Joe Hart, Pablo Zabaleta, Marko Arnautovic and Javier Hernandez but the team has struggled to meld.
Sullivan’s comments come as pressure on Bilic mounts and could be seen as a warning to the manager to buck up his ideas.
The co-owner has hinted that the club’s hierarchy did everything they could to help the manager and that work must now be done on the training pitch in order to improve performances.
“Overall Slaven is happy with the business we have done during the summer transfer window," Sullivan added.
“We received the manager's wish-list before the window opened and we have managed to get the top four players on it.”
Sullivan also revealed that a deal for Portuguese midfielder William Carvalho fell through at the last minute.
“It is no secret that we made a club record bid for Sporting Lisbon’s William Carvalho but unfortunately that offer was rejected a couple of weeks ago.
“Late last night Sporting Lisbon made contact to accept the original offer, but unfortunately it was just too late in the day, and we simply did not have enough time to put the player through a medical.
“We were not prepared, as a club, to buy a player for that amount of money without him having gone through adequate medical checks.”
Carvalho’s situation was not the only chaos going on behind the scenes at West Ham. Diafra Sakho, the 27-year-old centre forward, underwent a medical at French club Rennes before David Gold, the club’s co-owner, ruled out a sale.
Sakho then flew back to the UK, via Chelmsford racetrack, to try to force through a move but one did not materialise.
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