David Moyes had no plans to sell Sebastian Haller but decided to take the offer from Ajax when it came out of the blue.
The manager told a virtual press conference on Saturday morning of the events leading up to the sale of the Frenchman who is now an Ajax player.
And it was at some variance to the version given by the Dutch club who had claimed that they had been working on the deal for three months.
That too was different to what we had learned by agents close to the situation who had explained that three Bundesliga0 clubs had wanted to loan the player and one were in with a permanent offer.
And although Haller is claimed to have wanted to wait until summer he made it clear that once Ajax came in it was an offer he couldn’t refuse , presumably as it meant a move to a club where a manager who knows his game inside out is employed and whom he believed would get his best from him
Moyes said: “I think that the Seb Haller situation was simply that we got an offer, we didn’t expect it, we weren’t planning to lose Seb this window.
He’s done great for us, he’s won a few games recently with his goals, so we wish him well. I think it’s a really good move for him to go to Ajax and it was something which maybe if we didn’t take this offer now maybe we would not have got it at a later stage, so we just felt it was the right thing to do. But it certainly wasn’t planned.”
Asked whether selling Haller was good business for West Ham Moyes replied “One thing you need to do as a manager, is make sure that you have spaces to bring people in, if you don’t have spaces then all you do is gather players and it becomes more difficult.
So, part of the job is to create room for it, we have now created room that we can bring players in. Are we ready for that? No, not really. But we will go along and we’ll do what we can and we will try and bring in what we think are the right players.”
Grealish, Zaha, Kane, Sterling, salah. All dirty cheating divers that fall over at the slightest touch.
Explained – end of. No need for Hallergate inquiry.
Strange to think we have to get an attacking body in straight away. Maybe that the right man is not yet available ? Better to wait and get the player we want than to fill up places just to ‘please’ the box-tickers.
Interesting to see Ason Villa’s Jack Grealish did not want to be cup-tied so missed the Liverpool FA Cup game. Not a big fan of his – needs to pull his socks up and stop the ‘intelligent and clever’ play of falling over to ‘win’ free kicks. Wilf Zaha ditto. That’s two off the list.
COYI
Seems strange, Haller, his people and Ajax all nee this was going on for months( hence no tackles from him) but Moyes knew nothing.
I wonder how much Sullivan knew and when, seems strange they knew what to bid to have it accepted in the first week of the window.
Makes Moyes look a bit stupid if Sullivan was working on it…
Snod was top man wish he could of stayed but I understand…with the haller sale and maybe a couple others, it always looks like we accept first bid ..I could be wrong but it always sounds to me that we are a bit soft when it comes to negotiating deals…very surprised we havnt got a concrete plan for a new forward..well in my eyes another 2 forwards because we wanted one anyway with haller,,suprised this has not spoke about more …what’s your take hugh ..wd needed a new striker with haller so if we but now we are in no better position..we will still only have 2 forwards,, and most clubs if not all normally have 3 …?
Shame to see Snoddy go, although understand the managements thinking as they look forward to getting players in and promote youth from the Academy