West Ham are taking legal action against Sporting Lisbon's communications director following a dispute over the club's transfer pursuit of William Carvalho.
The Premier League club are suing Sporting's director of communications, Nuno Saraiva, for libel regarding a Facebook post in which Saraiva alleged that West Ham co-owner David Sullivan was 'lying' about the his club's negotiations for Carvalho.
Sullivan released a statement on West Ham's website on Friday saying that the Portuguese club had accepted a bid for Carvalho on deadline day, but that it was too late for a medical to be carried out.
The statement read: "Late last night Sporting Lisbon made contact to accept the original offer, but unfortunately it was just too late in the day, and we simply did not have enough time to put the player through a medical."
But Saraiva responded in a lengthy Facebook post on Saturday morning, writing: "David Sullivan lies."
The post continued: "At Sporting, as has already been said by our president, no proposal has been made for the player William Carvalho.
"The football industry is not the set of an adult film in which all obscenities are allowed.So the boss of a club demands a lot more than this intellectual pornography.
"Mr David Sullivan has a duty to prove what he says. That is why Sporting challenges him to publicly show the proposals he claims to have made as well as the evidence that Sporting received them.
David Sullivan Jr, the son of the West Ham's co-chairman, posted a message on Twitter account last night to confirm the club's stance.
Read More
Over two posts, Sullivan Jr wrote: “West Ham are commencing legal proceedings against the communications director of sporting Lisbon as a written offer for the player was made.”
“To Bruno de Carvalho the president of sporting Lisbon. To say we never made an offer is nonsense and serious libel.”