Saturday 2 September 2017 22:59, UK
Sporting Lisbon's communications chief Nuno Saraiva has disputed a claim by West Ham's David Sullivan that the east London club made an offer for William Carvalho.
Sullivan, joint-chairman of the Hammers, used the club's website on Friday to explain that his club had had an initial bid for the 25-year-old Portugal international midfielder rejected.
And he went on to say that Sporting had contacted West Ham close to the deadline to accept the offer, only for Sullivan to turn the opportunity down.
A statement from Sullivan on the West Ham website on Friday read: "It is no secret that we made a club-record bid for Sporting Lisbon's William Carvalho but unfortunately our offer was rejected a couple of weeks ago.
"Late last night, 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."
However, Sporting have now disputed this claim, with Saraiva taking to Facebook to respond: "No proposal arrived for the player William Carvalho.
"Mr Sullivan has a duty to prove what he says. For this reason, Sporting Clube de Portugal challenge him to publicly show the proposals he says have been made, as well as the evidence that Sporting CP has received them."
