The issue holding up Jesse Lingard’s loan move from Man Utd to West Ham

Martin Macdonald

• Updated: 19 May 2021 15:43 BST
• 2 min read

West Ham are keep on bringing in Man Utd attacking midfielder Jesse Lingard on loan for the rest of the season, but will need to perform some squad reshuffling in order to do so.

The Hammers currently have two domestic loans within their squad – Craig Dawson on loan from Watford, and Said Benrahma on loan from Brentford.

No club in England is allowed to have more than two, which means that if West Ham are keen on bringing Lingard to the club in January, they will either have to terminate, or make permanent, one or both of the deals currently in place for Dawson and Benrahma.

The most likely scenario is that West Ham will complete a permanent deal for Benrahma earlier that planned, as the original plan was to purchase him in the summer.

That deal will cost them around £20m plus another £5m in add-ons, and if it is completed, it will open up a loan space for the acquisition of Lingard.

Despite earning 20 starts for the club in the 2019/20 season, Lingard has drastically fallen out of favour at Old Trafford under Ole Gunnar Solskjaer and has not played a single minute of Premier League action in the current campaign.

He has been limited to just two starts – one in the FA Cup and one in the League Cup – and Solskjaer has admitted that his player is desparate for more minutes.

“Jesse trained this morning, he wasn’t in the squad,” the Man Utd boss said on Sunday.

“So, of course, he wants to play football, we will have to see and I will sit down with Jesse and make a decision on what we’re going to do.

“So far, he’s been the ultimate professional, trained well with a small group this morning that were not in squad. I will sit down and see if anything comes up. I’m very happy to have him around us as I know he could have played today and done well.”

Lingard has been linked with a number of Premier League clubs recently in addition to West Ham, with both Newcastle and Tottenham having seen their names mentioned previously.

As for West Ham, they are on the lookout for a new striker and have targeted the likes of Youssef En-Nesyri of Sevilla, Gaetan Laborde of Montpellier, and Hwang Hee-chan of RB Leipzig.