West Ham chairman David Sullivan has confirmed that Sporting Lisbon accepted a club-record fee for William Carvalho on deadline day.
Sullivan claims that Sporting contacted West Ham on deadline day to accept an offer that was initially rejected a couple of weeks ago.
However, it was too late in the day for the club to finalise a deal, meaning that West Ham were unable to secure the signing.
Speaking to West Ham’s website, Sullivan said this:
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.
West Ham were thought to have had an offer in the region of £38m rejected for Sporting, which is likely to be the offer that Sullivan is referring to.
Slaven Bilic is said to be happy with the business that the club has done this summer, although they currently sit bottom of the Premier League after losing all three of their games so far.
Bilic also rejected the chance to sign Renato Sanches or Krychowiak.
