Products You May Like
David Moyes is planning a significant overhaul of West Ham’s squad this summer to cement their status as top-four challengers in the Premier League.
The Hammers lie in sixth place, just three points outside the Champions League places and resume their Europa League campaign on Thursday with a round-of-16, first-leg tie against Sevilla.
Moyes became the first coach to win consecutive Manager of the Year prizes at the London Football earlier this month, reflecting West Ham’s top-six finish last season and their efforts to improve that standing this term.
However, Moyes has warned there will be sweeping changes this summer far beyond the retirement of club captain Mark Noble, especially after missing out on making any signings in January.
– Stream LIVE games and replays on ESPN+ (U.S. only)
“I’m testing myself, I’m testing my staff to see if we can make this better,” Moyes told ESPN.
“What are we going to do? If you stay so long with a thing… We know we’ve got a relatively small squad — it was the way we chose to be at the start.
“We know we’ve got to change things around. We’ve got quite a few changes coming this summer.
“One would be, for example, the captain and leader of the club, Mark Noble, will retire, which would be a huge miss for us.
“So on and off the pitch, things will be broken which we’ll have to try and fix and certainly Mark Noble leaving will be one of them. We’ve got a fight on to stick with it at the moment and I need us to get stronger, I need to find a way of getting us stronger for next year.”
Asked what the next step for West Ham looks like, Moyes continued: “I still see consolidation of where we are.
“We were sixth last year so if people say you should be finishing fourth or fifth or whatever, I think that could be ahead of where we are. We’re still building on it, we’ve got there quickly but we have to try to stay in that position.
“I see new players, I see a stronger squad, I see a change of the guard in some places because of what’s happening at the club. But that will be normal. We do have to make changes in the summer, we do need to look at how to move forward again.
“I don’t want to go stale and when I see things dropping away I have to make sure I step up. We can’t do too much about it at the moment but we have to make sure we keep squeezing the last little bit out of them that we can.”
ESPN reported on Feb. 11 that West Ham were just one signature away from signing Atalanta striker Duvan Zapata in January, only for the Italian club to fall silent in the final hours of the window with the deal incomplete.
“Yeah, that one was done,” said Moyes. “But they, for the last four hours of the window, just disappeared, shut down.
“I hate saying it because it sounds like a hard luck story and I don’t want it to be like that. I want us to get them. The job for me is to get good targets and add to the squad.
“But it’s not always that spending money and making signings brings you success. There was a period here where they tried that. So that’s why I want to get the right characters, the right people who will give us the effort and energy that’s been shown by the likes of Tomas Soucek, Vladimir Coufal, Pablo Fornals, people like that. So we’re looking for players that are going to add to that if we possibly can.”
James Olley is on the judging panel at the London Football Awards.