The surprise £30m-rated Bayern raid West Ham or Crystal Palace could carry out in January

Go back a couple of years, and Sacha Boey was all the rage in the gossip columns – just about every major club in Europe was linked with the Frenchman, and eventually Bayern Munich spent as much as €35m (£30m) to sign him from Galatasaray. Sadly, it didn’t quite go to plan.

Two years and just 12 Bundesliga starts later, and it’s reported that Bayern are planning to sell him in the immediate future, with both West Ham United and Crystal Palace alleged to be among the suitors. But is he good enough for the Premier League, and how reliable are the rumours linking the London sides with a potentially intriguing transfer?

Why Premier League teams might be interested in Sacha Boey

When Boey was last on the transfer market in January 2024, several of the Premier League’s wealthiest sides – perhaps most notably Arsenal – were widely linked with a move. Boey didn’t quite live up to that level of hype in Bavaria, but the 25-year-old may still be a shrewd signing for the right side.

As a right wing-back, Boey (who has played age-group football for France but has yet to make a senior appearance for his national side) has his weaknesses. He isn’t a brilliant crosser of the ball and nor is he especially strong with the ball at his feet, struggling to beat defenders one-on-one. Teams that want wing-backs who attack on the overlap may well want to look elsewhere.

But for teams who would rather their full-backs play a slightly more conservative, supporting role, he has plenty of quality to work with – not least his efficient, accurate passing, his excellent one-on-one defending and his superb off-ball movement.

Used correctly, Boey can be a huge asset at both ends of the field, but he hasn’t worked out as well as Bayern would have hoped, with his technique and all-round game lacking in one too many areas for Vincent Kompany to develop trust in him. There’s plenty of room to fail to make Bayern’s grade and still be good enough for several Premier League sides, however.

For a team like Crystal Palace, who ask Daniel Muñoz, their current first choice, to play an aggressive, direct role in the build-up, signing a player like Boey would represent a bit of a left turn – they could scarcely approach their role in the final third more differently as wing-backs despite operating in the same position. For a side like West Ham, however, who aren’t necessarily expecting their full-backs to hit the byline or to break the lines themselves, he might be an interesting addition.

Boey wasn’t, in the end, good enough for Bayern Munich, but there’s plenty of ability in there provided he’s playing in the right sort of system. But will either of the Premier League sides linked with him make a move this January?

Will West Ham or Crystal Palace sign Boey over the winter?

The original source for the story linking West Ham and Palace – along with several other sides – to Boey is journalist Ekram Konur, not (in our opinion) a source we would view as especially reliable.

Nevertheless, Boey’s lack of playing time at the Allianz Arena strongly hints at the likelihood that Bayern will listen to offers. The question is less whether they would sell him but how much for (not discussed in Konur’s reporting) and who is actually interested.

Konur mentions Juventus, Lyon, AS Monaco, Sevilla and former club Galatasaray as being interested alongside West Ham and Palace, and that would represent some tough competition for the Frenchman’s signature if it proves to be an accurate list of potential suitors. There is, as yet, no way to corroborate the list however.

Palace are facing the prospect of losing Muñoz over the course of 2026 with Barcelona increasingly linked with a mildly surprising move in the press, but the gap between Boey’s skillset and Palace’s style of play seems relatively substantial. Much would depend on whether Oliver Glasner is content to adapt his system to suit the best players he can get his hands on or whether he would rather Muñoz were replaced with someone more similar.

West Ham may be a more logical destination on that level, at least, even if they do have Aaron Wan-Bissaka and Kyle Walker-Peters on the books already. In their case, however, a new striker is the immediate and most urgent priority, and they have little enough left in their transfer budget to spend a significant sum on what would arguably represent a luxury signing.

A January bid from either side seems somewhat unlikely unless there is a clear belief from one club or another that they would be getting a bargain – more likely, if either team is genuinely interested, that an offer would wait until the summer if he was still available.

Boey will likely be on the move in 2026, but the stories linking him to West Ham and Palace seem questionable on a few different levels, at least ahead of the January window. But Boey has plenty of quality and was superb in Turkey – so perhaps an unexpected side will take a chance on him after all.