Will Moyes’ strategic spending pay off?
- by Allan Cummings
- Filed: Tuesday, 26th October 2021
Chelsea, Liverpool, Manchester City, Manchester United and now Newcastle certainly have the pots of gold to bring in the best of the best for their squads. So, what to do when the purse strings are tight, but you’ve got your eyes set on staying put in the Premier League top six?
Well, David Moyes and his recruitment team have well and truly played a blinder this transfer season and used the window to open doors for some very promising players to shine at the London Stadium.Source: Pexels
Careful planning and meticulous execution, from scouting to sign-up, has seen the Hammers make some very savvy moves, as reported by 90min, and secure a squad that, in the next few years, looks set to lead us to even greater heights. Take Alphonse Areola, on loan from PSG but with a very affordable price tag it looks likely we’ll pay. Are we looking at Fabianski’s successor here? Paris Saint-Germain have surely missed a trick!
From the overlooked to the up-and-coming
Then we’ve got Kurt Zouma’s arrival at centre-back - Moyes’ target above all others - whose expertise gained at Chelsea will be utilised to the max. Said Benrahma and Nikola Vlasic both slot perfectly into the free-flowing brand of football Moyes prefers in attacking areas. And now the boss has spent wisely on a squad with the versatility to interchange positions and deliver some incredibly positive results, what’s next?
Moyes has made no secret of his desire to promote up-and-coming homegrown players into the first team as reported on the Hammers News site: “We’ve got to make sure we’re doing our homework close to home because we do a lot in France and other countries, but we want to make sure we get the best of British players if we can” he has said. To that end the appointment of former Manchester City scout Rob Newman as Head of Recruitment will go a long way towards achieving Moyes’ ambitions: “I’d like a department with scouts and analysts going forward” Moyes has stated.
Spending wisely for the long run
Yet he knows this isn’t going to happen overnight, and there will still be a reliance on external organisations such as scouting agencies and data analytics companies to help identify players for the profiles they are looking for based on the club’s requirements. This ability to scour through large amounts of data available and pull up personalised recommendations based on the criteria provided has also had a huge impact on other industries such as insurance and betting.
Comparison sites are able to find the best deals for different forms of insurance, so that consumers don't have to do the legwork. This is also prevalent in the sports betting industry as, for example, you can now find the best betting sites on Winners.net thanks to its focus on looking at punters’ needs and recommending the sites that fulfil them based on well-researched stats and reliable user reviews.
It’s this same ability to make informed decisions centred on past form and future potential that has allowed Moyes and West Ham to start building a squad set for prolonged success in the long run.
This is an exciting time for the club and Moyes is certainly helping to build a sustainable platform for the long-term with the planning that is going in to finding suitable transfer targets for the club's needs.
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