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Ivorian striker Wilfried Bony is at the exit door from Etihad as Pep Guardiola wants to sell the player who joined Manchester City a year and a half ago for £27.5m. West Ham are interested in the 27-year-old and Arsenal, as usual, have a bid pending but didn’t actually make one.

West Ham strikers Andy Carroll, Diafra Sakho and latest record signing Andre Ayew are all injured, Ayew expected to be off the pitch for four months, and manager Slaven Bilić says his team “are short of numbers”. The Croatian manager only has Enner Valencia to rely on, with youngster Ashley Fletcher and young loanee Jonathan Calleri not realistic options to lead the charge at this moment.

“Carroll and Ayew will be off the pitch for a while so we’ll try to sign a new forward. Bony is an option because he plays in the position where, even before the injuries, we tried to sign a player.”, said Bilić.

Having spent the entire summer looking for a striker and having been turned down by so many transfer targets, West Ham finally managed to sign a good player in Andre Ayew, and then the Ghana forward got injured in his first match. Now West Ham are again in the same situation, perhaps even worse, and they need to sign a striker in the next seven days. They set their sights on Wilfried Bony and Simone Zaza.

Meanwhile, Arsenal were preparing a £30m bid for Bony but no official bid has yet been made. Arsenal keep looking for a striker and have been finally turned down by their main transfer target Alexandre Lacazette as he’s staying in Lyon. French club president Jean-Michel Aulas said “Of course Alexandre will stay. He is one of the staple players in this club”.

Wilfried Bony joined Manchester City in January 2015 from Swansea City and has scored 6 goals in 36 appearances for the club in BPL. He scored 35 in 70 for his former club Swansea but there he had a different treatment. In Man City he was second fiddle to Kun Aguero and was expected to make things happen as a golden sub rather than produce goals as a regular starter. Having spent so much time off the pitch, Bony never found good form. But in a new club he could become one of the better strikers in the league again.