West Ham are unlikely to make an early move for Shane Duffy.
The London side appear to be Celtic’s strongest competitors to sign the Brighton defender but after years of heavy spending it looks like the London outfit are reigning in their expenditure.
Davie Moyes took over as manager at the end of December, after an initial struggle he stamped his authority on the squad to finish the season five points clear of relegation.
Rather than go on another spending spree Moyes is moving on a number of fringe players such as Adrian Ajeti with old fashioned coaching to improve players the priority over the cheque book.
In the summer 2018 transfer window West Ham paid £40m to sign Felipe Anderson from Lazio with a further £50m splashed out during that window.
Duffy is expected to cost between £5-7m but speaking to his club’s website he played down speculation that he was about to reach for the chequebook:
We are going to try and improve the players we have. I’ve always been more interested in the players we’ve got than the ones who are at other clubs. so I think the improvements we made from the restart after lockdown were good.
We’ve got some bright young players and some players who are improving, so if we can add to it, great. But as I’ve reiterated a few times, the owners spent a lot of money over a year ago, and I’m sure we don’t have that amount of money available to spend again.
We are just coming out of Lockdown, so everybody understands in football that money’s tight at this time of the season.
Duffy is under contract with Brighton until 2023 but is no longer a first pick as Graham Potter remodels his side.
