Sullivan admits Hammers struggling to get players
David Sullivan has gone public in admitting the Hammers are struggling to bring in the players David Moyes wants and suggesting there may be no signings at all this summer.
The chief shareholder chose to appear on his mate Jim White’s talkSPORT show and decided to defend the lack of business done at the London Stadium.
Not surprisingly he chose to hold the manager responsible declaring: “It is the manager’s decision. He doesn’t want to bring players in who, in his opinion, are just numbers, are just squad players. He wants to bring players in who will improve the team.
“We have a number of bids in for a number of players, these are key players at decent size clubs, obviously outside the UK. They don’t want to lose them so it is difficult. Whether we get any of these players, I do not know. Some are young, some are old.
”What we need is wins. The way we played against Arsenal at the weekend, we are capable of winning games.”
He then turned to the hugely controversial Grady Diangana sale which upset a huge number of fans – not to mention the likes of Mark Noble, Seb Haller and Declan Rice.
He said: “It was a decision made because we have eight wingers. Agents offer me players all the time and if they are wingers, I say ‘look we have got too many wingers’. We have some wonderful wingers who are not in the team.
“Robert Snodgrass who played yesterday in a holding midfield role scored a wonderful goal. Anderson is a fantastic player, Yarmolenko had two assists last night. Unfortunately, we have got a very unbalanced squad.
“We now have the funds to buy a player or two. Unfortunately players the manager wants, we can’t get. We have two or three bids. Unfortunately, the benchmark is very high, it is very hard to get those players.”
ClaretandHugh says: David Sullivan has made just about the worst move he could have done from his own point of view in giving it large on talkSPORT. He may believe that people are suddenly going to accept an approach which they have been resisting and protesting about for a long time by suddenly accepting all he has to say. That’s not gonna happen. We really haven’t a clue who advises him on media appearances – if anyone – but to be telling us publicly the manager won’t accept bringing in players he doesn’t fancy is more of a compliment to Moyes than a defence of the club’s inability to buy. We have had far too much dead wood through the door to repeat that craziness. Why he would explain the club is incapable of doing business because the benchmark is very high is a crazy thing for a chairman to say – at what other club would a person in such a position admit that to be the case? Best to say nothing at all SURELY! This sounds very much a case of him trying to say “it’s not my fault.” And the whole tone of the interview shows he is continuing to act – if we didn’t know already – as a de facto director of Football which frankly has been unacceptable for too long. He needed to stay silent but even that is now no longer an option.