As West Ham United prepared for their Premier League opener at AFC Bournemouth this weekend, most of the press pack’s attention has been focused on transfer comings and goings which have ramped up with the new campaign imminent.
West Ham United have been busy in recent days, with Ajax’s Mexico international midfielder Edson Álvarez joining David Moyes’ ranks, while offers have been accepted for James Ward-Prowse and Harry Maguire by Southampton and Manchester United respectively.
With Gianluca Scamacca and Nikola Vlašić departing this week too, the renewal of Moyes’ squad is well underway and the manager is looking forward to having the new tools at his disposal.
First of all there is the challenge of the Cherries to negotiate, with Moyes keen to build on last season’s European success…
Making moves
We’re really pleased to have signed Edson Álvarez
We’ve been working really hard on [recruiting] many players this summer, but it’s always good when you get one in and hopefully it will be like buses now and we might get a few more come in as well.
Edson won’t be available on Saturday though, as he hasn’t trained since the CONCACAF Gold Cup [in July].
[With the other reported moves] James Ward-Prowse is having a medical with us today (Friday). I don’t think it’s right that we talk about players when we haven’t signed them yet, but the fact of the matter is that we’ve agreed a fee and he’s having a medical.
[On Harry Maguire] we’ve had a bid accepted by Manchester United, but while he’s not my player I don’t think I’m in any place to discuss him really.
We’ve worked incredibly hard to bring players in. We’ve made offers for several players, more than several, and you can only make the offers and hope they get accepted. If they don’t get accepted you can’t do much more than that.
Bournemouth a big test
I’ve always thought Bournemouth are a big test and they have been for many years.
They’ve done brilliantly as a football club and with what they’ve tried to do on not as big a budget as many other clubs.
Andoni Iraola is now in charge, a different manager – we have lots of lots of good managers come into the Premier League from all over the world now and it’s great to work against them, compete against them.
I made the transition to manage in Spain and it’s not easy going to manage in La Liga, just as I wouldn’t expect him to come to the Premier League and find it easy.
You have to have done something well to get in the Premier League these days and your past will have to stand up.
Bournemouth must trust him a lot and it suits their model. He comes from a part of the world which I know, the Basque Country. They’re really good people and it will be interesting to see how he does this season at Bournemouth.
It’s always a hard game against Bournemouth, but we had a really good result against them last year (winning 4-0) and I hope we can do the same on Saturday.
A disappointing Scamacca situation
I was really disappointed that it didn’t work out with Gianluca Scamacca, because I like him a lot.
But Gianluca didn’t want to be in England and we found it very difficult. He had his rehab from his injury back in Italy and wouldn’t participate with us here so we found it very hard.
We like him a lot, he’s a really good boy and it’s just a pity it didn’t work out for us.
It might be that we look to strengthen the forward area, but we’ve got other areas we might want to strengthen as well, so not just that one.
All I can say on Lucas Paquetá is we’ve had an offer from Manchester City. It’s not close enough to our valuation to make us think that way, so at the moment we have no decision [to make].
Positives still here after Prague
We do come into the season with positivity
I just walked through the corridor at the training ground and looked at all the pictures of us winning the European trophy and it’s incredible what we did, for everybody around the place.
When you see it now in the changing rooms, and I’ve said it before, when you come to London Stadium, you see some of the greats – Bobby Moore, all the greats of West Ham, and now when we come back this year [there’ll be more on the walls].
We’re coming into the season with a great deal of positivity. We have a brilliant feeling from last year and we want to keep it.
We played 65 games the season before last and 61 games last season. If you think about the amount of games we’ve had in the last two years it’s been incredible and it’s mainly about the success we’ve had in the league and in Europe.
We want to build on that and yes we want to get off to a good start as every team does. It’s where you finish that matters in the end – we didn’t finish in the position we wanted to be last year, but we made sure we weren’t in the position we didn’t want to be.
