Jonny Evans and Nacer Chadli staying at West Brom
Albion have kept hold of both Jonny Evans and Nacer Chadli this window after receiving no bids from any interested clubs on deadline day.
Manchester City were favourites to sign the in-demand skipper, and were reportedly willing to meet the £30million valuation.
But they never returned with another bid after having their initial £18m offer rejected by the Baggies.
Their interest was reliant on removing Eliaquim Mangala off their wage bill and the Baggies finding a replacement defender.
Although City wanted to offer Mangala to Albion, the French centre-half was not believed to be keen on the deal and no such offer was put to the Baggies.
Tony Pulis was only willing to sell Evans for a huge fee if he could get Mamadou Sakho to replace him, but that eventuality never materialised because no clubs got near to landing the Northern Irishman.
Sakho, meanwhile, is joining Crystal Palace for £26m tonight.
Evans flew over to San Marino with the Northern Ireland squad today and trained with Michael O’Neill’s team at 7pm.
But geography would have proved no barrier to any potential deal, with O’Neill admitting tonight that it would be “pretty much a paper exercise” by this point, suggesting a medical wasn’t necessary.
Evans, who has been based at City’s training ground with Northern Ireland for the past two days, was keen to move to blue half of Manchester.
However, City’s inability to off-load Mangala appears to have scuppered the deal.
Arsenal and Leicester were also interested in Evans this window, although the Northern Irishman was nowhere near as keen to join those two clubs.
The Gunners reportedly offered Shkrodan Mustafi in exchange, but the Baggies weren’t keen on the deal.
Leicester had a £23m bid rejected and walked away from talks after realising Albion would not sell to a mid-table rival and Evans was not keen to join the Foxes.
Pulis was willing sell Chadli for £25m after the Belgian refused to go on his pre-season tour to Austria.
Swansea were interested at one point, but Paul Clement brought in Renato Sanches on loan from Bayern Munich instead.
When they sold Fernando Llorente to Spurs on deadline day, they turned their attention to their strike force and re-signed Wilfried Bony from City and in turn, cooled interest in Chadli.
