David Moyes
Jack Grealish became the most expensive British footballer in history when he made a £100million transfer from Aston Villa to Manchester City – and West Ham manager David Moyes believes he has his own £100m stars. Declan Rice had a superb season last time out for West Ham as he led the team to a top-six finish and Europa League football before starting every match of England’s run to the Euro 2020 final. Hammers manager Moyes said last season that he believed Rice to be worth “far, far more than £100m,” and alluded to his vice-captain when asked about the fees being paid for the likes of Grealish and Romelu Lukaku.
David Moyes said: “We have some players that we value at £100million and we won’t be selling them. That is the way it is, you are not going to get rid of your better players, you don’t do it and if you are it is going to be huge money. So from that point of view, I think the clubs are right to do so, but I think there are an awful lot of other clubs at the moment that are probably not able to pay that money and look to those levels.”
Rice has long been the subject of transfer speculation, with Chelsea understood to have a long-standing interest in the defensive midfielder, however, the Hammers continue to maintain their stance that the 22-year-old is not for sale and they have received no bids for the midfielder. Moyes was asked if success in the transfer window could be represented by keeping players rather than adding to the squad, with the boss agreeing partially with that statement before adding
David Moyes said: “What we’re saying to ourselves, or I am certainly, is I want to add to our squad if I can do so.I think I have a good team but I think I need to try and add to it if I can but I want to try and do the right thing. We brought in Tomas Soucek, Vladimir Coufal and Jarrod Bowen in the last 12-18 months and all of them have been successful. If we can try and bring in another three who are as successful as them then that would be excellent but that is not always an easy thing to do. I do think that we still have room to improve, whether that be the squad, the team or whether that be certain positions on the pitch so I hope we are able to do that.”
Moyes clarified that he only mentioned three players because of the success of Soucek, Coufal and Bowen and not because he has three new signings lined up.
David Moyes added: “I said three just because we brought in three in Coufal, Soucek and Bowen and we must not forget [Said] Benrahma who in recent games has shown to be very good and we brought him in last year and it has taken him a little bit more time to settle than one or two others but that can certainly happen in the Premier League.”
