WEST HAM boss Slaven Bilic has made Lamine Kone his number one defensive target – and is confident of landing the Sunderland centre-half during next month’s transfer window.

Bilic is ready to lodge an offer of around £20m as he looks to improve his side’s porous defence next month, with Kone his preferred option even though the Ivory Coast international is set to miss up to a month of the second half of the season as he represents his homeland in the Africa Cup of Nations.

West Ham’s interest will leave Sunderland boss David Moyes with a difficult decision to make, just five months after he rejected a £20m summer offer from Everton.

Everton boss Ronald Koeman retains an interest in Kone, but is lining up a £25m January bid for Southampton’s Virgil van Dijk instead, leaving the path clear for West Ham to enter discussions with Black Cats officials.

Moyes turned down Everton’s advances in the summer, claiming it would be all-but-impossible to replace Kone so close to the start of the season even if Sunderland were to receive more than £20m.

That concern still applies, and with Papy Djilobodji potentially also unavailable in January as Africa Cup of Nations-bound Senegal ponder offering him a recall to the national team, Moyes will be extremely reluctant to lose Kone permanently.

Recruiting a replacement would still be extremely difficult, although Moyes continues to be linked with Phil Jagielka, who is currently sitting on the bench for Everton. The Sunderland boss would also be understandably worried about selling Kone to one of his side’s direct relegation rivals, with West Ham currently just two points clear of the Wearsiders in the table.

However, the need for squad strengthening at Sunderland is obvious, and with Ellis Short having ruled out major new investment during the January window, Moyes’ best chance of recruiting new players would be to sell one of his leading assets.

Jordan Pickford has been linked to a number of leading Premier League sides in the last few weeks, but Sunderland sources do not expect the youngster to be leaving Wearside next month.

Kone’s position is less certain, even though the centre-half signed a new five-year deal in September. Some weekend reports suggested that deal contained an automatic release clause, and while that is not believed to be the case, there is understood to be an agreement that Kone will be informed of any interest above a certain price tag.

The 27-year-old was clearly agitating for a move in the summer, even if talk of a formal transfer request remains in dispute, and while his performances have improved in the last month or so, he has struggled to regain the form that made him such a key performer under Sam Allardyce in the second half of last season.

He is set to continue alongside Djilobodji when Sunderland entertain league leaders Chelsea tomorrow, but the Black Cats will be without Didier Ndong after the midfielder picked up his fifth booking of the season in Saturday’s 3-0 defeat at Swansea.

Jan Kirchhoff is set to replace Ndong, having been a 57th-minute replacement for the Gabon international at the Liberty Stadium.

The weekend defeat dumped Sunderland back to the foot of the table, but having watched his players win three of their previous four matches, Moyes remains confident his side are moving in the right direction.

“We’re back on the bottom,” said the Black Cats boss. “But we’ve been there for most of it so it’s not something new to us.

“But we aren’t back at square one because we’ve got ourselves back in with a fighting chance, and a few weeks ago we didn’t have that. So we will brush ourselves down, and get on with what’s next, which is a busy week.”