West Ham are ramping up our interest in various players this summer as the club continue to focus on the upcoming season to fight for promotion, with ExWHUEmployee providing an update.

As was reported previously, the clubs main objective has been to retain key players as we look to gain promotion at the first attempt, with Axel Disasi noted as a player of serious interest also after his excellent loan spell.

However, the club are looking at brining in new players, as Ex reports on The West Ham Way Patreon.

“The club have other ambitious targets on a list, one of which is Fikayo Tomori of AC Milan,” stated Ex. “Again, this remains a highly ambitious target but should the likes of Newcastle, Leeds and Crystal Palace as well as Al-Hilal of Saudi fail in their attempts to sign him we could try and offer him an alternative.

“He only has 11 months left on his deal at Milan and is also said to been keen on a return to London, two things we could take advantage of.

“Another long term interest is Southampton defender Taylor Harwood-Bellis who could also move for the right deal.

“Looking at the foreign market for these “ambitious” targets one is Otávio of Paris Fc (who we have a good relationship with following the Kante transfer).

“He is also known to our assistant manager Rui Pedro Silva. He was identified as a potential signing for F.C. Famalicão before he left the club. The player did ultimately sign there but Rui Pedro had left for Nottingham Forest to join up with Nuno.

“We also like his Senegalese teammate Moustapha Mbow as well and there have been a number of enquiries from Premier League teams for his services.

“Another Brazilian centre back that has been watched is Alexsandro of Lille in France. He has a few Premier League teams interested in him too but should a move to them not materialise we could make our move.

“Again, another with a lot of suitors but one who could be picked up should a move not materialise to the Premier League (Brentford are very keen) is Tiago Gabriel of Lecce. The Portuguese under 21s international is highly rated and has been performing well is Serie A.

“A third potential Brazilian signing is Gabriel Pereira who plays for Nils Koppen’s former club Fc Copenhagen and might be persuaded to join him at The Hammers.

“To go alongside the ambitious more established option the club are also looking at a few players who are perhaps less established but with high potential.

“The first on that list is Ben Nelson of Leicester. We were looking at a number of their players after they were relegated to League 1. One of those players was Abdul Fatawu, the Ghanaian winger which we exclusively revealed at the start of the window (this was jumped on by most other media outlets who wrongly reported a bid has been submitted). He was mainly an interest should Bowen go and looks like he could now be joining Ipswich.

“Interest in Ben Nelson is solid although once more he does have a number of other clubs looking at his signature.

“These include domestic clubs (Manchester United and Sunderland) as well as Torino in Italy and the former had a bid turned down as Leicester hope to get around £10-£12m for the player.

“Another club where we had targeted numerous players was Cardiff City. I mentioned that we were interested in Yousef Salech, Rubin Colwill and Dylan Lawlor. Well strong interest remains in the young centre back Lawlor. The club are continuing discussions with Cardiff over this.

“Once more with all our targets because of the quality we are looking at there is interest in the player and it was even reported that German giants Bayern Munich had looked at the player following a number of impressive international displays for the Welsh national team.

“There is of course the options of potentially loaning a talented player from the Premier League. Genesis Antwi of Chelsea is an option although he is likely to go to Strasbourg, Chelsea’s sister club. Jaden Dixon of Arsenal is another, he was born in Havering and already has limited experience of playing in the Championship with two games for Stoke City.

“The final option and more likely one is Stephen Mfuni if Manchester City. He also has experience of the Championship having impressed on loan at Watford last season and could be allowed to go on loan again this season.

“West Ham are in talks with a number of these players as I write this and this is just the centre back positions.”