David Moyes has vowed not to add another striker to West Ham’s catalogue of expensive flops.
Moyes is searching for reinforcements in attack before the January window closes, with injury-prone Michail Antonio currently his only recognised forward.
The London Stadium boss has already offloaded both of West Ham’s record signings, Sebastien Haller and Felipe Anderson, signed by previous manager Manuel Pellegrini.
In recent years Javier Hernandez, Lucas Perez, Andre Ayew, Andy Carroll and Simone Zaza have all arrived for big money and with big reputations which they failed to live up to.
Moyes admitted West Ham have bid for Sevilla striker Youssef En-Nesyri, and “knocked on the door of three of four really good players” as they search for a replacement for Sebastien Haller.
But the Scot insists he would rather rely on Antonio and his fragile hamstrings for the rest of the season than see West Ham make another costly mistake.
“What I don’t want to do is I don’t want to spend and waste my money, take a wage up bringing a player in, spend big money and find that actually, I’ve got it wrong,” he said.
“I’d rather I waited and got someone who might be available in the summer.
“It’s difficult to say, but maybe in the past that may well have happened and I’m trying to be correct in as much as I can do.
“You can’t always be correct in what you do, we’re always trying to make the right signings and not make the wrong ones.
“No manager attempts to make a bad signing but I just want to try and make sure that any money I’m spending – because we don’t have a big pool of money – so I’m trying to spend it wisely.
“We’ve bought well with the likes of Vladimir Coufal, Tomas Soucek and Jarrod Bowen. So I’ve got to make sure that I’m continuingly adding players of that ilk.
“Now and again we might have to go and spend big money to get somebody in, but if we can’t get them then they are not available.”
Antonio will lead the line again when West Ham host West Brom on Tuesday night.
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