Carlos Tevez's move to Manchester United suffered a fresh setback last night when West Ham blocked the Argentinian's proposed medical on the day that he arrived in
Although Tevez has already agreed personal terms of £90,000 a week, the Premier League has demanded that any deal must be done between the two clubs and not with the player's representative, Kia Joorabchian.
A delegation led by the West Ham chairman, Eggert Magnusson, met a team led by the United lawyer Maurice Watkins at the Premier League's offices in London yesterday but no agreement was reached.
It was the first time that the two clubs had formally met to talk about the deal. West Ham will not sanction a medical until they are happy for the transfer to proceed and there are currently no plans for the two clubs to resume negotiations.
The Joorabchian camp, however, remain optimistic that a solution can be found in the "next 24 or 48 hours". "Everyone is still talking and trying to work it through," said a source.
Tevez landed at
It is thought that the most likely solution would involve United and West Ham agreeing a deal and then Joorabchian being paid a substantial agent's fee as compensation. The situation is different from the loan arrangement that took Javier Mascherano to
With Tevez the club tore up their third-party agreement with Just Sports Inc and Media Sports Investments - the company that Joorabchian founded - after being fined £5.5m for illegally registering the player. West Ham are adamant that Tevez is contracted to them for another three years while the Joorabchian camp maintain that the agreement cannot be cancelled unilaterally.