West Ham boss David Moyes says a January deal for Atalanta striker Duvan Zapata was almost closed.
Moyes says Zapata had all but agreed a deadline-day move — only to vanish for the final hours of the transfer window.
“That one was done,” Moyes told the London Evening Standard. “But they, for the last four hours of the window, just disappeared, shut down.
“We know we’ve got a relatively small squad — it was the way we chose to be at the start. The job for me is to get good targets and add to the squad. But it’s not always spending big money that brings you success.
“There was a period here where they tried that, so that’s why I want to get the right characters, the right people who will give us the effort and energy that’s been shown by the likes of Tomas Soucek, Vladimir Coufal, Pablo Fornals, people like that. So we’re looking for players that are going to add to that if we can.”
He also said: “I see new players, I see a stronger squad, I see a change of the guard in some places because of what’s happening at the club. But that will be normal. We do have to make changes in the summer, we do need to look at how to move forward again.
“I don’t want to go stale, and when I see things dropping away, I have to make sure I step up. We can’t do too much about it at the moment, but we have to make sure we keep squeezing the last bit out of them that we can.
“In football management, you have to make some unpopular decisions at times, that’s part of the job. But, look, I’ll always try to make the right decisions for West Ham.”
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