West Ham United could pay the price for stalling on Jeremy Ngakia’s contract with the talented defender now set to leave the London Stadium for free, according to Football London.
Just three months after a 19-year-old academy graduate burst onto the scene with a performance against Liverpool that David Moyes labelled ‘fabulous’, that very same player is on the verge of bidding farewell to the Hammers.
Ngakia will be a free agent this summer.
And, according to The Mail, the teenager has turned down the chance to sign a new £5,000-a-week deal with his representatives demanding somewhere closer to £20,000.
While the temptation may be to lambast a young player for demanding such a substantial pay rise after a mere handful of first-team appearances, West Ham must look at themselves before blaming anyone else.
As Football London points out, the capital club were warned that they must hand Ngakia a long-term contract when he was turning heads in the reserves at the start of 2020. They failed to act, and now look set to lose him for absolutely nothing.
A whole host of rival clubs will no doubt be interested, especially after Ngakia held his own impressively against the oft-irrepressible Sadio Mane as recently as February.
So any Hammers fans who were hoping that Ngakia would follow in Declan Rice’s footsteps, rising through the ranks to establish himself as one of the first names on the team-sheet, look set to be disappointed.
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