Manor Solomon scored 10 and made 12 as Leeds went up, and West Ham have him for £7 million

West Ham United have agreed a deal with Tottenham Hotspur for Manor Solomon, and the price tells you how strange the last three years have been for a winger who was, for one season, about the most dangerous attacking player in the Championship. The Hammers will pay £5 million up front with a further £2 million in add-ons, and Tottenham have kept a 10 per cent sell-on clause. Solomon is set to sign a three-year contract with an option that would take him to June 2030, with his medical expected this weekend.

Leeds have seen this film already

The reason West Ham want him has a number attached to it. On loan at Leeds United in 2024-25, Solomon produced 10 goals and 12 assists in 39 league appearances as Leeds went up as champions. In a division where attacking players are judged on whether they can produce anything at all across 46 games, 22 goal involvements in a title-winning season sits near the top of the market.

It is also the profile West Ham are missing. Nuno Espirito Santo has spent his summer watching the squad get lighter rather than stronger. Mateus Fernandes went to Tottenham for a club-record £85 million. Crysencio Summerville went to Al Hilal for around £60 million. The money came in, the goals went out, and a club preparing for its first second-tier season since 2012 was left with a forward line that has never played in one.

Three years of nearly at Tottenham

Solomon arrived in north London in July 2023 on a free transfer, his Shakhtar Donetsk contract suspended because of the war in Ukraine. He started well. His full debut came in a 5-2 win at Burnley on 2 September 2023, where he set up two of Son Heung-min’s hat-trick goals and looked like the creative addition Ange Postecoglou’s side had been missing.

Then the knee went. A meniscus injury in training that October needed surgery, a second procedure followed in March 2024, and the season disappeared. He has hardly been a Tottenham player since, in the sense of actually playing for them. Leeds took him for a year. Villarreal took him for the first half of last season and got one goal in 11 games. Fiorentina took him in January and got two in 16 Serie A appearances, most of them starts.

Fiorentina liked him enough to want him permanently and not enough to meet Tottenham’s €10 million valuation. That is how the deal ended up in east London instead, at a fee Spurs would not have entertained from Florence.

A Championship signing on Championship terms

Solomon becomes West Ham’s third arrival of the window, after Keiber Lamadrid from Deportivo La Guaira and the defender Joel Veltman. That is a thin summer for a club that has to go up at the first attempt, and Nuno has been publicly asking for more.

The shape of the deal says where West Ham now sit. Five million fixed, add-ons on top, a sell-on percentage back to the selling club. Nobody buys a 27-year-old Israel international this way when they are still in the Premier League. A relegated club does.

Whether it works turns on the knee more than the talent. Solomon at Leeds was quick, direct and horrible to defend against one against one, and the Championship punishes full-backs who cannot handle that week after week. Solomon since Leeds has been a squad player at two clubs who chose not to keep him. West Ham are betting the first version is the real one and that regular football brings it back.

They will find out fast. West Ham open the Championship season at Turf Moor against Burnley on Sunday 16 August, two relegated clubs drawn against each other with the television cameras there. It is the same ground where Solomon had the best afternoon of his Tottenham career, which is either a decent omen or a reminder of how long ago that was.

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