West Ham United boss David Moyes has told Football.London that the club simply couldn’t afford a deal for Eberechi Eze.
The Hammers were strongly linked with a move to sign Eze, with the London Evening Standard suggesting that they were hoping to get a deal done involving Jordan Hugill.
Hugill ended up signing for Norwich City instead, and that allowed Crystal Palace to swoop in and win the race for Eze.
The Eagles paid around £16million for Eze, with the deal rising to £20million – and he’s really starting to impress now.
A skilful playmaker with real talent and creativity on the ball, Eze was a menace against Tottenham Hotspur and West Bromwich Albion in recent weeks, whilst he also scored a superb free kick against Leeds United.
Tonight, Eze faces West Ham, and Hammers boss Moyes has admitted that he wanted Eze, but the money simply wasn’t available at the time.
West Ham ended up signing another Championship talent instead as Said Benrahma joined from Brentford, with the loan-to-buy deal much better for West Ham – but whether he will prove to be better than Eze remains to be seen.
“I think the timing for Eze, we didn’t have the finances at the time to go for Eze when that deal was becoming available,” said Moyes. “Things only changed for us late in the window as far as finances went really because we had other priorities like we were trying to get a central defender in, we were looking at a full-back at the time as well.”
“At that time we hadn’t got a great deal of money to spend. That changed as the window went on, [Grady] Diangana left and it just freed up a little bit of money as we went on but at the time we just weren’t there for Eze because we didn’t have the financial capabilities to do that at the time,” he added.
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