West Ham defender Issa Diop is poised for a move across the capital after Fulham and the Hammers finally agreed a £17m fee, according to reports from his native France.
The 25 year-old centre back, who David Moyes said had ‘not put himself forward to play’ in West Ham’s recent fixtures, has agreed a five-year contract at Craven Cottage and will travel from France back to London in order to begin a medical at Motspur Park and complete the finalities of what has been another summer-long transfer saga. Diop, who starred after coming through the Toulouse youth academy and helped the French under-19s win the 2016 European Championship, was West Ham’s record signing in 2018 but has struggled for regular game time recently under Moyes.
The 6ft 4in centre back has made 121 appearances and scored eight goals during his time with the Hammers, but made only thirteen league appearances last season. He has made no secret of his desire to join Fulham, posting several Instagram messages in French last week, and would become Marco Silva’s second central defensive signing in a matter of days after the Whites loaned in Shane Duffy from Brighton on Friday.
Bienvenue Issa enfin liberté pour toi, c’est ce que tu veux et nous sommes heureux que tu signe pour notre club. Nous vous souhaitons tout le meilleur et avons hâte de vous voir porter le maillot blanc du Fulham FC.
Let’s hope we can get this done quickly so Marco can integrate him with the other players also perhaps one more CB and maybe the Kluivert deal with Zirkzee as well let’s wait and see
Coming together finally would still like additional cover in midfield and for Mitro. Please leave Willian in South America last 2-3 seasons suggest he is past his sell by date.
Interesting comments from Moyes, seems Diop wanted to play for us good sign
Things are slowly moving in the right direction. Hopefully other targets can see what we are doing and see us as a good option. After all we do have the best view of London
Never been convinced by his value, but it’ll be good to finally get it over the line one way or the other, and we’ve clearly saved some money on some of our other acquisitions, so on balance, it’s probably all OK. Definitely want to see the Kluivert and Zirkee deals come off too. We’re going to need more firepower than just Mitro. There’s no such thing as a one-man strike-force in the Premier League amongst any team that wants to be established.
Bloody London Transport!
You wait forever for a bus and then two come along together!
I have no idea how we can afford to pay 17million-probably based on appearances, avoiding relegation etc.
He had to go on strike to push through the move -which, as it happens, is NOT. a good sign but, hopefully, he can re-capture the type of form he displayed in his first season in East London although, after Saturday’s display, he may find himself keeping Leno, Mbabu and Duffy company on the bench.
One by one, they are coming… Let’s get one more CF and a LF and if possible another 10 please. 🙂
Good signing! We have 4 CB now, with Duffy’s experience, and Tosin+Diop I see we’re good covered on that zone.
IMO we’d need decent backups for Palhinha+Reed and Mitro, 2 more players. These could be on loan.
And if it could be done the Kluivert transfer would be great too, a young player with lots of potential to explode under Silva, something similar to Wilson case.
I don’t see Zirkee better than Muniz sorry, too unexperienced and too many “if”. Much better a proven help.
Mitrovic, Muniz, Stansfield
I dont want another number 9 – give the boys who watched and encouraged Mitrovic chase a goal record last year some game time.
We’ll be kicking ourselves if they both turn out to be ballers.
Yes it’s slowly coming together but I hope there will be a few more additions to the squad as we don’t have enough cover if we get more injuries.