West Ham manager David Moyes has admitted that he thought that Islam Slimani would end up joining his club before transfer deadline day.
The Hammers were hopeful of taking the Leicester City striker on loan for the rest of the season but in the end, he ended up joining Newcastle United.
“Slimani was agreed on Tuesday night and it didn’t come off on Wednesday. I only woke up on Wednesday to be told that it wasn’t going to happen,” said Moyes.
“Then on Wednesday afternoon we hoped to do Amadou. We put in a loan offer for him, which we hoped might have been good enough to get him.
“We didn’t want to pay the asking price because we hadn’t seen him often enough to say it was worth putting out £16m for him but we made a really big loan offer and couldn’t get him in the end.”
While the Hammers did miss out on the signature of Slimani, they have managed to sign Josh Hugill on a four-and-a-half year contract from Preston North End.
The 25-year-old Hugill scored 10 goals from 29 appearances in all competitions for Preston this season and it remains to be seen whether he has the quality required to succeed in top flight football.
