da luck： Having been seemingly overlooked by plenty of big clubs over the last few years, it’s legitimate to ask if William Carvalho is any good.
da bet vitoria： Linked perpetually with the Premier League, both Arsenal and Manchester City have been singled out as potential destinations for the Portuguese Euro 2016 winner, but after years of links to Champions League level clubs, the biggest suitor of the summer seems to be West Ham United.
Clearly, the Hammers are a side who have designs of breaking into the top six and their monopoly on the Premier League’s European spots, but after a disappointing first season at their new home and a disastrous start to the new campaign, Carvalho could be forgiven for thinking that his direct route to the top has been closed off, and that he’ll have to take a more scenic route.
But even this move to London has been on the cards for a while, and it still hasn’t managed to get over the line. Well before the first game of the season, Carvalho was touted as a Hammers target, and in that game it was obvious that the Sporting midfielder was the kind of player Slaven Bilic’s side really needed to have in his ranks, as Nemanja Matic spent the afternoon robbing West Ham midfielders and setting up United counter-attacks.
Since then, he still hasn’t arrived, and although the most recent reports are positive from a West Ham point of view the longer it drags on, the less likely the deal looks.
If he does arrive, though, is there some reason that the bigger clubs haven’t waded in for him? Is there a reason that, with their seemingly infinite money over the last few season, even before the latest TV rights deal came into effect, the likes of Manchester City didn’t sign Carvalho?
The jump from Sporting in the Portuguese Liga Nos to the Premier League is a big one, and perhaps that’s also why Ruben Neves joined Wolves, and not one of the Premier League clubs who seemed to want his signature when he was at Porto.
There’s also an accusation around Carvalho that, even though he is a gifted midfield player with a good first touch and an impressive range of passing, he can sometimes be lazy on the pitch. That’s certainly never been something to admire in a midfield player, but in this era of high-intensity pressing it seems even more of a turn off.
And yet, just because the Premier League’s elite turn their noses up doesn’t mean that Carvalho isn’t of the required standard, nor does it mean that he never can be. But perhaps the fact that he’s yet to move from Lisbon shows the power of interest from one of the Premier League’s big boys.
Given the potential for an enquiry from a rich English club, Sporting have set their asking price quite high. And when there are no takers, especially for a few seasons, perhaps that means Carvalho was stuck, unable to move to a club slightly further down the food chain than one of the Premier League’s big boys simply because the rest had been priced out.
And now that every club in England seems to have enough money to pull off a transfer of that magnitude, and that most clubs in Germany, Spain, France and Italy don’t, West Ham aren’t competing with many clubs in European competition for his signature.
And so perhaps, if that’s the case, worries about Carvalho’s ability after the refusals of richer clubs are unfounded. And although they still give cause for some concern, it’s probably even more concerning that the deal has taken this long to get over the line.