As good as it gets: Moyes has hailed Ings’ arrival at West Ham
(Picture: Getty Images)David Moyes has explained West Ham’s move to sign Danny Ings, claiming the forward is “as good as it gets” during the January transfer window and backing him to fire the Hammers clear of the drop.
Ings has signed a two-and-a-half-year contract at the London Stadium after completing his switch from Aston Villa in a deal worth £12million plus £3m in add-ons.
Despite not being a regular starter at Villa, Ings has scored six Premier League goals so far this season, twice as many as West Ham’s joint top-scorers Gianluca Scamacca and Said Benrahma. The 30-year-old could make his debut when relegation rivals Everton visit the London Stadium on Saturday.
“We need someone who knows the league,” Moyes said of Ings, who has 68 top-flight goals in 188 appearances across the course of his career. “We’ve been linked with a few players and we’ve looked at a few players to try and bring in to strengthen [us], but I wanted to bring in someone who wasn’t a risk, knew how to score.
"I think Danny Ings is as good as it gets and to be fair, at this time of the year, it’s not easy to pick up centre forwards. We’re really pleased to have him, he’s already settled in quite well this morning so we’re really pleased to get.”
There have been reports that Moyes will be sacked should his side lose to former club Everton tomorrow, with the Hammers 19th in the table and on a rancid run of six defeats in seven League games either side of the World Cup break.
The move to sign Ings represents a shift in transfer policy after Moyes spent significant sums on overseas talent - including the likes of Gianluca Scamacca, Lucas Paqueta and Nayef Aguerd - last summer, with the Scot admitting he has had to deviate from his original plan in a bid to turn around the Hammers’ fortunes.
“No, I’ve not,” Moyes said, when asked whether he had worried about his future in recent weeks. “What I do think is I’ve had to go off-piste a little bit, because obviously we bought in players and we wanted it to happen.
“We tried to break it a little bit in the summer to try to move it onto another level because I’d seen signs that we weren’t quite going the way we wanted to. [Now] we’ve had to go and do things slightly differently because of the position we’re in at the moment.”
