Tomas Soucek will become the first signing the summer as we have reported elsewhere on the site and nobody is happier about that than manager David Moyes.
A ton of words have justifiably been written about the Czech midfielder who with Mikey Antonio, Jarrod Bowen and Declan Rice has been one of the magical Hammers as we have clawed our way to within a millimetre of safety.
He arrived from Slavia Prague pretty well unsung but goes into the last two games of our season as one of the finest loans/cum buy we have made in some years.
His talent at popping up in the box between defenders to score important goals coupled with his outstanding defensive abilities has made him – along with Bowen – arrivals to die for.
Moyes rates him extraordinarily high and sees him as one of those recruits that ensure managers keep their jobs.
And speaking at today’s pre-match presser the manager said:“Tomáš Souček was always sticking around. The only way he wasn’t sticking around is if we went down. But we always had it in our plans that he’d stay with us. He’s a West Ham player, simple as that.
The important thing for any manager is getting recruitment right. If you get your recruitment wrong, you tend to lose your job, so you need them to work for you.
The two boys we brought in in January, Tomáš and Jarrod Bowen, have made a big difference to us and Tomáš is beginning to blossom.
To join the Premier League and make an impact so quickly is not easy. It takes time. Tomáš has certainly helped us and without him, I’m not sure we’d definitely be a Premier League club, which of course we are still not guaranteed to be.
We’re going to try to look to bring up some other ones, of course we will, but we’re not daft and we know you don’t always get them right. That’s impossible, but the more we can get correct, the better we can hope for going forward.”