So yet again we have West Ham United telling their fans just who they could have signed after David Sullivan claimed that they offered Renato Sanches to manager Slaven Bilic before the transfer window closed.

With West Ham looking a terrible side at the bottom of the Premier League at the moment, Sullivan is clearly trying the age old family trick of showing their ambition but how close they were to players in the same way they tried with Andre Ayew when we first signed him.

Speaking on their official website, Sullivan said “Overall Slaven is happy with the business we have done during the summer transfer window

“We received the manager's wish-list before the window opened and we have managed to get the top four players on it.

“Grzegorz Krychowiak and Renato Sanches were both offered to the manager before their switches elsewhere, but he told us that he is happy with the squad he has.

“As a board we are behind Slaven, and he believes he has the tools to turn around our form and rectify our disappointing start to the season.”

Let's get this right here, at no point in any of the reports on Sanches did anyone mention West Ham and it's very strange that this comes out at a time when they are being criticised for their transfer dealings. Mind you, the family has form - remember when they were criticised for missing out on Ayew?

This one is a simple one - you didn't miss out David, you just weren't there at all but you've heard of the player so it sounds good. Football fans aren't that thick.

Interestingly, Sullivan has already been accused of lying by Sporting Lisbon. Sullivan claimed that "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 [Thursday] 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".

In response to his statement, Sporting’s director of communications Nuno Saraiva has said: “David Sullivan lies.

“At Sporting, as has already been said by our president, no proposal has been made for the player William Carvalho.

“The football industry is not the set of an adult film in which all obscenities are allowed.

“So the boss of a club demands a lot more than this intellectual pornography.

“Mr David Sullivan has a duty to prove what he says. That is why Sporting challenges him to publicly show the proposals he claims to have made as well as the evidence that Sporting received them."

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