West Ham United have withdrawn their interest in Portugal international William Carvalho, a player the club's beleaguered manager Slaven Bilic had made fundamental to his plans for the season.

After rejecting an initial offer of €30million with a further €10m of performance-related variables earlier this month, Sporting asked West Ham to increase their offer for Carvalho to around €42m. West Ham joint chairman David Sullivan has refused to sanction an improved offer for the 25-year-old and the Lisbon club now consider the deal dead.

According to a West Ham source, Sullivan has questioned Bilic's leadership of a team that has lost its first three English Premier League fixtures as well as the quality of the manager's acquisitions this summer. West Ham invested heavily on recruiting Marko Arnautovic from Stoke City, Javier Hernandez from Bayer Leverkusen and Pablo Zabaleta from Manchester City.

(Image: AFP)

(Image: Reuters)

Bilic - who led the club to an 11th place finish in its debut campaign at the London Stadium - has now overseen a run of just three Premier League victories in 17 games dating back to February. The poor sequence of results is understood to have led Sullivan to bale out of the Carvalho deal and reconsider all further spending in the current window.

Former Croatia national team coach Bilic has asked for an alternative to Carvalho in the centre of his midfield and a winger to compensate for the loan of Robert Snodgrass to Aston Villa and Sofiane Feghouli's sale to Galatasaray.