Speaking recently on the Football Writers Podcast, Jonathan Northcroft stated that David Moyes’ plans for West Ham United are ‘at odds’ with the club’s board, and that the manager believes the Hammers have ‘the most potential’ of any club in the Premier League that remains ‘unfulfilled’.
Since taking over at West Ham for the second time in his managerial career, Moyes has overseen 23 matches in his current spell as the Hammers boss, winning seven, drawing five and losing 11 of his fixtures.
Last season, the club finished in 16th place in the Premier League table, just five points above both Bournemouth and Watford, who were relegated to the Championship.
However, with West Ham spending a total of £108.18 million on the likes of Sebastien Haller, Pablo Fornals and Jarrod Bowen over the course of last season, it could be argued that merely avoiding relegation was an underachievement for the side, with The Guardian predicting a 10th-place finish for West Ham prior to the 2019/20 campaign.
Northcroft stated that Moyes does indeed believe that the club has potential and that the Scottish manager “wants to build” something at the West Ham “along the lines” of his time at Everton, where he took the club from several bottom-half finishes in the Premier League and turned them into a consistent top-eight team.
Speaking on the Football Writers Podcast, Northcroft said: “He’s impatient. David [Moyes] can see the potential [at] West Ham. He was saying to me it’s got the most potential of any club in the Premier League that’s unfulfilled.
“He knows what he wants to do with it, he wants to build something there along the lines of Everton. He thinks they can be the club that hits that gap in the market that Everton did, and he’s got all these ideas for restructuring and doing recruitment in a different way [and] building step by step, which is perhaps at odds with what’s above him.”
Do you think Moyes can lead West Ham to the top half of the Premier League?
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TIF Thoughts…
From Northcroft’s comments, it would seem that the journalist is aware of Moyes’ plans for West Ham and that the manager wants to restructure the way the club operates, however, that this is also not particularly the way the West Ham board want to do things.
However, with West Ham only finishing in the top 10 of the Premier League on three occasions in the past eight seasons, and with only one of these finishes being higher than 10th place, it would seem that something does need to change at the club if they want to become a more of a force in the top half of the Premier League.