David Moyes: West Ham need to follow Red Bull model of recruitment
Moyes returned to West Ham in December 2019
Written by Training Ground Guru — March 22, 2021
WEST HAM manager David Moyes says his side’s renaissance has been built on becoming more “robust and energetic” - and that the next stage of their development will be to follow a “Red Bull model” of recruitment.
When Moyes took over the team for a second time on December 29th 2019, they were 17th in the Premier League. Sixteen months on, they are fifth with nine games to go.
“When I came in, the big thing was the team had been conceding a lot of goals and had very little energy on the pitch,” the Scot told the club’s official website.
“We were bottom of the physical stats in nearly everything in the Premier League. I didn’t think that was necessarily to do with the players. My first sort of ‘lay the foundation’ was to try and make sure we could have a team that could be competitive.
“What I didn’t want was a team that was going to be rolled over and couldn’t keep up, players were coming off injured after 60 minutes, a training ground full of injured players all the time.
“At the moment we’ve got a few injuries but prior to it we’ve been nearly injury free. We had to get the players in a better physical condition where they were more robust and resilient.
“It’s been built into them that we’re training most days. All of those things had to go into saying, ‘we’re changing West Ham, we’re not going to have anything that isn’t completely professional.’
“We got Tomáš (Soucek) who could run, we got Jarrod (Bowen) who we knew could run and got some goals. I felt as if the first thing we had to do was get an energetic team that could at least run around and compete with the opposition.”
Moyes brought in four assistants - Paul Nevin, Kevin Nolan, Alan Irvine and Stuart Pearce - and said they had also been important in the club’s improvement.
“I felt having a bigger staff would be helpful, partly because the way I want the club to work, is much more in smaller groups. I need all the departments to know what they’re doing. They’ve all got good job specifications.
“Kevin and Paul are doing a great job with organising the set pieces. Alan is always watching and analysing the opposition for us. Pearcey will debrief on what we’ve done on the games as well.
“Coupled with that, we all have the other parts which is the training, the team, the players. We’re trying to work an awful lot with the players individually to show them what they’re doing well and not so well so we can bring them on.
“The big thing I can say about the player is they’re responding, and the staff have been wonderful.”
The former Everton and Manchester United manager said the next stage of development would be in recruitment.
“I don’t see our model that we should go and buy all the most expensive players in the world, because I don’t see that as a long-term future for West Ham,” he said.
“I use the Red Bull model as an example, because I see them buying in young players for the future. We need to be trying to recruit for down below who are maybe going to come through in a year or two but we’re not quite at that stage yet.
“At the moment we’re still looking for players who are going to give us a consistent first team. If we’re doing the same again next year I would hope we would start to say we are going to look down below more, bring more through from the Academy.
“We’ve got one or two we like in the Academy at the moment - it’s not too long we had Ben Johnson up, we’ve got young Mipo (Odubeko) training with us regularly at the moment.”
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