West Ham United boss David Moyes has made a huge £60m Everton transfer call and the club’s owners will be extremely grateful.
West Ham and Moyes’ former club Everton shared plenty of column inches during the summer transfer window.
Everton signed Hammers target James Tarkowski, with his preference to remain up north a key factor. Not that West Ham fans will mind too much having signed £30m Ferrari Nayef Aguerd instead.
West Ham pulled out of a deal to sign Amadou Onana, paving the way for Everton to sign the Belgian.
And Everton also reportedly beat West Ham to the signing of Conor Coady when Moyes was considering allowing Craig Dawson to depart late in the window.
But one of the biggest links between the two clubs was regarding West Ham’s supposed interest in Everton striker Dominic Calvert-Lewin.
West Ham were first linked with a shock £60m move for the Everton striker during the January transfer window.
That didn’t happen but The Sun claimed the West Ham owners were willing to back Moyes to land Calvert-Lewin in the summer and were not be perturbed by his big wages.
A Hammers insider told Claret and Hugh that Moyes was planning to use his close contacts at Goodison Park to get a deal done for the 25-year-old Everton hitman.
West Ham boss David Moyes has made huge £60m Everton transfer call and owners will be extremely grateful
It is believed Everton were keen to offload Calvert-Lewin but in the end Moyes opted against a raid on his old club, signing 23-year-old Italy striker Gianluca Scamacca for half the price instead.
Now it seems West Ham boss David Moyes has made huge £60m Everton transfer call and the club’s owners will be extremely grateful.
Moyes is known to do his due diligence on all factors when it comes to recruitment from character assessments to injury records and robustness.
When talking about transfers ahead of the summer window Moyes made the importance of the latter very clear.
“We want robust players here, we want players who are playing all the games because if you get a couple of injuries you need them,” Moyes said at the end of last season.
“Overall we need a robust squad.”
And that is not a word that can be used to describe Everton’s injury-prone Calvert-Lewin right now.
The reported £60m West Ham target missed most of last season, featuring just 16 times for Everton.
The England forward has already missed the majority of this season, after suffering a ‘freak’ knee problem on the eve of the 2022/23 campaign, that kept him out of the Blues’ opening nine league matches.
And now Calvert-Lewin is injured yet again after going off in the 2-0 defeat to Leicester with a hamstring problem.
Everton will await the results of a scan on the injury but it is likely to keep him out of action now until after the World Cup break and will jeopardise any slim hopes he had of making the England squad for the tournament.
Former Hammer and now Toffess boss Frank Lampard admitted he was aware of interest in his striker in the summer, saying he was ‘not silly’ to think clubs were not sniffing around (The Guardian).
Well neither is Moyes it seems.
Because while it is never nice to see players suffer with injuries, the fact is Moyes got it spot on by snubbing a move for Calvert-Lewin.
And West Ham’s owners will be grateful for saving them for a disastrous record signing.