Stoke City Eye Up Crystal Palace Star to Replace Marko Arnautovic Following West Ham Move

Stoke City manager Mark Hughes is eyeing up a £15m bid to secure the services of Crystal Palace winger Andros Townsend.

Last month, star forward Marko Arnautovic left the Potters for West Ham in a £24m deal, and Hughes is reportedly looking to London for his replacement. 

Stoke's need to bring in attacking reinforcement has been further intensified by the departure of veteran star Jon Walters to Burnley, and the Potters - already one of the Premier League's lower scorers - risk opening the new season with a severe lack of goals and forward threat.

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Palace, however, only signed Townsend last summer for £12m, following a move from then newly-relegated Newcastle United. Despite having a difficult season, the 13-time England international made 36 appearances for the Eagles last season, as they eventually avoided relegation.

Despite impressing in pre-season, the 26-year-old's future under new manager Frank De Boer at Selhurst Park remains uncertain.

This speculation comes after Hughes himself expressed a desire to speed up transfer business last week following frustration at a lack of progress in the transfer window.

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He said, as reported by The Sun.: "As always we have a will to get players in but those players are at other clubs and you have to wait for everything to fall into place. At the moment it's a little bit frustrating for everybody, myself included, but I think in fairness a lot of clubs have been on tour and doing pre-season on foreign shores.

"I imagine in the next couple of weeks a lot of those clubs will be coming back and the people we need to sit in a room with will be more accessible. Hopefully you can then get deals done."

Stoke complete their pre-season matches on Saturday in Germany with a visit to RB Leipzig, before their Premier League opener against Everton at Goodison Park on August 12th.