West Ham take big-money swipe at Everton on club website
West Ham have just enjoyed a season for the ages under manager David Moyes, but they’ve still found time to fire shots at his old side Everton.
Moyes was revered on Merseyside for his 11-year spell with the Blues that saw us punch well above our weight at times, including qualification for the 2005/06 Champions League qualifying rounds.
The Scot’s reputation took a monumental hit after spells with Manchester United, Real Sociedad and Sunderland, but he’s steadily rebuilt it during his second spell at the London Stadium, helping the Hammers to a sixth-place finish and a Europa League berth.
It’s been a glorious season by their standards, thought they still finished just six points clear of Everton despite winning just three of our final 12 Premier League games.
In an interview with captain Mark Noble on the official West Ham club website, the second question, or rather statement, took a jab at the Blues and a couple of our other Premier League rivals.
The West Ham club journalist said: “To finish above Tottenham, Arsenal, Everton and other clubs who have spent a lot of money, this was about togetherness, spirit and resilience…”
We don’t want to admonish the East London side of their success this season, but to suggest we’ve spent outlandishly compared to them is laughable.
According to Transfermarkt figures West Ham spent £48.7million this season, with an extra £2.12million expected to be paid for Craig Dawson in the summer.
Everton, meanwhile, have shelled out £67.38million. The board splashed out big the previous season, with a £108.9million outlay recorded, but so did the Hammers, with £107.82million.
These figures can have different variables and wages aren’t taken into account, but it does show that West Ham are no paupers themselves.
In January they offloaded club-record signing Sebastien Haller to Ajax, incurring a £20million loss on the striker who they bought for £45million in 2019. [Daily Mail]
Everton have not spent near that amount on one player in recent years.
To denigrate our club, saying we’ve spent a lot of money and lack their qualities of “togetherness, spirit and resilience”, is pretty poor on their part, and shows a lack of awareness.
Incidentally, most of our positive results this season have been based on team spirit and being a cohesive unit – just think of those brilliant, battling wins over Liverpool, Chelsea and Arsenal.
Quality is what we’ve been lacking in, and there’s an argument to suggest we actually should have spent more than we did last summer.
Unfortunately we can only blame ourselves for being dragged into this after a pretty dismal season, one that had promised so much but meandered out into nothingess.
In other Everton news, a number of Blues stars have been left baffled by Carlo Ancelotti’s decision to leave out this player.
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