Three way battle emerges as Leicester City, West Ham, and Besiktas try to sign Napoli midfielder

Gokhan Inler was quite bad for most of last season. That's not a secret. It's a little sad, because he's been a very good player in the past, but at 31, a decline was inevitable. That it happened so fast and sharply was unfortunate, but hey, that's football.

Now Napoli are looking to move on having basically replaced , but there's good news for the Swiss midfielder -- several teams have lined up to try to secure his services.

Besiktas have been hovering around Inler for almost two months now, eager to bring the midfielder to Turkey, the country of his heritage and a place where he has a fairly significant fanbase despite electing to play for his native Switzerland internationally. They've been joined by West Ham in their pursuit in recent days, an interesting development given that the English team's new manager, Slaven Bliic, most recently coached at, you guessed it, Besiktas.

Neither team seems to be in pole position at the moment, though -- Leicester City, once rejected by Inler, have come back with a fresh pursuit and a new offer for the midfielder. They've reportedly had an offer of €6 million accepted by Napoli, and seem optimistic over how their talks with Inler himself are going.

Several German teams are rumored to be chasing Inler as well, with HSV and Werder Bremen believed to have inquired into Inler's availability and Schalke having withdrawn an effort to sign him, but by every report available right now, Leicester seem to be leading the chase for Inler's signature by quite a ways.

It'd be interesting to see Inler play in England, especially getting involved in a likely battle against relegation. Leicester are in their second season of their current stint in the Premier League, but only narrowly avoided relegation last year. The transfer window hasn't been overly kind to them so far, either, with their depth getting gutted and losing a couple of key players. Inler would definitely be a help for them, but the question is whether he'll be able to do enough to keep them in the EPL for a third straight year.