West Ham boss David Moyes has opened up on his admiration for Newcastle United defender Sven Botman following Saturday’s 1-1 Premier League draw at St James’ Park, speaking to Football London.
There’s just something so aesthetically satisfying about a left-footed central defender.
And that tea-time clash between two of English football’s most historic institutions saw Botman and Nayef Aguerd – big-money summer signings from Ligue 1 and two of the best lefties in the game – go head-to-head.
At one end of the pitch, Botman handled the unenviable task of marking Michail Antonio with trademark poise while, at the other, Aguerd proved once again that Moyes has landed himself a Rolls Royce of a defender in the frame of a Range Rover.
Aguerd produced one of the game’s stand-out moments in the second half; a perfectly-timed sliding tackle on Callum Wilson which went some way to re-paying West Ham’s £27 million investment.
And Moyes feels West Ham would be far higher than 12th if Morocco’s World Cup star had not been restricted to just four Premier League starts due to injury, likening Aguerd to Newcastle’s increasingly-talismanic number four.
Aguerd and Botman star as West Ham and Newcastle United draw 1-1
“I do, yeah (think we’d be higher in the table,” Moyes muses. “In the opening four or five games of the season, we had no centre-halves with Craig Dawson injured, with Angelo Ogbonna not back from the cruciate (injury). We were really toiling at the start of the season.”
“I’ve got to say I compare (Aguerd) a lot to Botman. Botman and Aguerd, I thought, were probably the two best left footed centre-backs in France.”
Chelsea, just last month, snapped up another talented southpaw who made his name on the other side of the Channel. But Benoit Badiashile, a £35 million addition from Monaco, would have to be content with bronze in Moyes’ personal rankings; Aguerd and Botman scrapping over gold.
“Obviously there’s the boy who has gone to Chelsea, and there’s a few others. But they (Botman and Aguerd) were in a similar category,” the Scot adds.
“(Aguerd) has only played four or five Premier League games. It’s been a huge miss, and you can see what (his return) has done to us. If you look at our results since he has come into the team, it has been a big, big difference to us.”
Fellow big-money summer signing Lucas Paqueta also enjoyed a positive evening on Tyneside; cancelling out Callum Wilson’s third minute opener to earn West Ham a morale-boosting draw.
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