West Ham boss David Moyes has aired his frustration at being forced to play on transfer deadline day, revealing he had planned to use Pablo Fornals in his side’s 1-1 draw against Bournemouth before a late bid from Real Betis.
Thursday night’s match took place during the final hours of what turned into a busy last day of the window for the Irons, with both Said Benrahma and Fornals in the process of sealing their exits from the club as the deadline approached.
Benrahma travelled to France to undergo a medical at Lyon ahead of his initial loan move earlier on Thursday, but Fornals watched the meeting with the Cherries at the London Stadium, having only been left out of the squad at the last minute after Betis had a £6.8million offer accepted hours before kick-off.
"We were planning to have Pablo involved tonight,” Moyes confirmed. “It’s a strange day to have a game and the deadline, especially when it looks like we’ve possibly done some late business.
“I don’t want to be moaning about it but you would think [the transfer window] could have been wrapped up last night.
“It’s our own fault but in this country the culture is we do so many deals on the last day. Really, you should be doing deals on the first day, not the last day. This window has been a really slow burner and because of that we’ve been left with a couple of things getting done on the last day, on a game night, which we’ve now had twice this season.”
The Hammers failed to bring in any reinforcements of their own on deadline day, having missed out on a number of targets this month, including Ibrahim Osman and Jota.
"We’ve been actively looking throughout the window,” Moyes added. “We’ve worked really hard to try and find good replacements, we’ve bid for one or two players but for different reasons we’ve not got them. We’ve tried to bring in some new faces.”
