By Laura O'Leary

26th Jun, 2018 | 11:34am

West Ham not interested in Grealish - Insider

West Ham are no longer interested in signing Aston Villa midfielder Jack Grealish, according to a club insider.

Trusted Hammers insider ExWHUemployee, via their Twitter account, shared on Monday that Manuel Pellegrini had turned down the chance of signing the Villans 22-year-old playmaker.

The Daily Express reported earlier in June that the Hammers had held preliminary talks with Villa about signing Grealish with the Championship side ready to sanction his sale in order to balance their books.

Football Insider verdict: 

This news is hardly shocking as Pellegrini is clearly aiming to only sanction deals that represent value for money as well as welcome the best players to the London Stadium. As the Express’ report stated that the Villans were looking for a fee in the region of £40million for Grealish and despite that figure having been reported as being much lower since, the Championship midfielder’s signature still isn’t worth pursuing. The Birmingham Mail claimed that Villans chairman Tony Xia was only looking for £25million from Grealish’s sale but that’s still a lot of money to pay for a midfielder who isn’t guaranteed to be a Premier League success story. The 22-year-old playmaker may have previously featured 34 times in England’s top-flight and shown glimpses of his potential but he didn’t consistently deliver impressive displays. In fact Grealish looks more suited to tearing up the Championship, which he did in his 2017/18 campaign, and while he deserves another chance at the top-flight it shouldn’t be given to him at such a high cost.

In other West Ham transfer news, the club have reportedly been in contact with a Brazilian winger whose contract is set to expire.

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