BREAKING NEWS: Leicester City beat Fulham in a smart plot to hijack ‘wonderful’ West Ham free transfer

September 6, 2024 admin LEICESTER CITY 0

The former Premier League winner is still wanted by a number of top flight clubs including Fulham and West Ham.

Fulham and Leicester City are hoping to hijack a West Ham move to sign Joel Matip as a free agent following his release from Liverpool as the transfer race hots up over the international break.

The Hammers are known to be in the market for an additional centre-back having allowed Kurt Zouma and Nayef Aguerd leave on loan in the final hours of the transfer window. Julen Lopetegui has added Max Kilman and Jean-Clair Todibo to his side but is believed to want another back-up option for the season ahead.

Any acquisition will now have to be a free transfer with the window shut. Former Borussia Dortmund man Mats Hummels had emerged as a priority target but he has now completed a move to AS Roma with West Ham attention shifting to ex Liverpool and Sheffield United men Joel Matip and John Egan.

The former of those two players is in high demand following his exit from Anfield. Matip only managed 10 Premier League outings last season due to an ACL injury but it had been reported that West Ham were already in talks with the 33-year-old.

However, CaughtOffside now reports that the Hammers face serious competition from Premier League rivals in courting Matip with the player not ‘completely convinced’ that a move to the London Stadium would be right for him. Fulham, Leicester City and Bournemouth are all named as clubs waiting to swoop in on the star.

The Cottagers of course lost key defender Tosin Adarabioyo at the start of the transfer window with the 26-year-old refusing to sign a new contract and leaving as a free agent himself, going on to sign for London rivals Chelsea. Fulham have since signed Joachim Andersen and Jorge Cuenca but Tim Ream did leave the club in that position.

Matip, who won the Premier League, Champions League, FA Cup and Carabao Cup is not short of options and comes with the backing of Jurgen Klopp. When leaving Anfield this year, his former manager said: “In all the years that I have been involved in football, I am not sure I have come across too many players who are more loved than Joel Matip. I’m not even sure it would be possible to say anything bad about him.

“A wonderful professional, a wonderful footballer and a wonderful human being – we have been blessed to have him with us for as long as we have and now all we can do is wish him well as he heads off in a new direction.

“Joel’s qualities as a player are there for all to see and as a club we have benefited from them since the first moment that he joined. I don’t think he has had too many headlines over the years but he has only ever been a very famous figure within our group.”

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