Mediawatch - 3 February

There was excitement to the end.

That much can be said of the final few hours of West Ham United's transfer deadline day - even if the excitement did not perhaps yield the end results this morning's newspapers wanted.

The Express run the story that West Ham had as many as eight players lined-up at one point or another on Monday, but no deal came to fruition.

The identity of those recruits was fairly clear - with a couple of Tottenham Hotspur players on the radar, as reported here in The Sun. However, perhaps Tottenham's reluctance to let Emmanuel Adebayor and Younes Kaboul come to the Boleyn Ground is a sign of the times and West Ham's rising power.

If any West Ham fans had a late night last night, they might blame a tweet from the Joint-Chairman which is covered on BBC Sport.

One player who thought he was on his way out was Carlton Cole, but as the Mail Online report, West Ham's failure to land Adebayor scuppered his move to West Bromwich Albion.  Hammers fans can continue to believe in the No24.

Elsewhere, the case of the Club's dispute with Senegal over Diafra Sakho is covered by the Evening Standard, with the Hammers reiterating they have done nothing wrong in playing the forward at Bristol City.