Romano reported West Ham move for €32m defender may lock Chelsea out of deal

Fabrizio Romano is on fire this morning, with transfer news coming thick and fast as teams get into gear for the summer.

He usually sticks to rumours about the top 6 teams in the Premier League, but today he’s ventured down into mid table to report on West Ham interest in Max Kilman, the elegant left footed Wolves captain.

Julen Lopetegui knows the London-born defender from his time as Wolves boss and Romano says “highly rates” the 27 year old who has really established himself as one of the better ball progressing defenders in the division.

Either way, it seems like this locks Chelsea out from their interest – Kilman will either be persuaded to sign a new deal, or will move to the Hammers.

Links cooling in any case

The Chelsea links to Kilman have been around for some time, and seemed to reach another peak a couple of months ago.

But the signing of Tosin Adarabioyo on a free transfer from Fulham strongly reduced our need to make additions at the back, and we’ve not heard much chatter about bids for the €32m valued defender since then.

Things will change should someone like Trevoh Chalobah leave, of course. We would then likely re-enter the market knowing a new option is needed. But for now we would imagine that we will take a back seat and wait to see how this develops between the three parties involved.

It’s important to note that Kilman is a good few years older than the bracket of players that are being focused on by this ownership. They are clearly happy to make exceptions (as with Tosin) but Kilman would be at the peak of his price, and that’s not really in alignment with the strategy which Laurence Stewart and Paul Winstanley are sticking closely to.