Despite a dreadful start to the new Premier League season for West Ham United, Lucas Paqueta and Mads Hermansen still ended a largely traumatic August with a pair of award nominations.
Lucas Paqueta was shortlisted for the Goal of the Month gong thanks to his long-range thunderbolt against Chelsea at the London Stadium.
The much-maligned Mads Hermansen earned a Save of the Month nomination, meanwhile. It is easy to forget, given how his first few weeks in a West Ham United shirt would go, that Hermansen’s career at his new club started with a superb denial of Habib Diarra during that clash with Sunderland on the opening weekend.
Both would miss out, however.
While Dominik Szoboszlai surprisingly fought off Richarlison’s overhead kick to claim the August Goal of the Month award, Manchester City’s James Trafford pipped Hermansen to the post.
As for the Player of the Month, Jack Grealish picked up the prize for the very first time. An award he never got his mitts on during those heady Aston Villa days now belongs to him following a flying start to life under David Moyes at Everton.
Speaking on Sky Sports, meanwhile, reporter Kaveh Solhekol cannot shake the feeling that Grealish would be wearing the claret and blue of West Ham had the struggling Londoners not dispensed with Moyes’ services back in 2024.
Kaveh Solhekol thinks David Moyes would have signed Jack Grealish for West Ham United
Despite drawing a blank against both Aston Villa and Leeds United, Moyes’ Everton have kicked off this season in a manner reminiscent of how his glorious first spell ended back in 2012/13. The Scot’s critics again mistaking discipline for drudgery.
Moyes has often been accused of lacking a vibrant side. That was a criticism which often came his way towards the end of a predominantly excellent stint in the London Stadium dugout too. Yet, freed from the tactical shackles of Pep Guardiola’s machine-like Manchester City, Grealish is a man reborn as the joker in Moyes’ pack.
No one has more than his four assists so far in the new Premier League campaign.
And, speaking as West Ham prepare to host Crystal Palace on Saturday at 3pm, Solhekol not only argues that the Hammers would look a lot stronger right now with Moyes in place of Graham Potter, but that Grealish would be completing a potentially formidable frontline including Lucas Paqueta and Jarrod Bowen.
“I think it was a big, big mistake to let David Moyes go,” Solhekol argues. “I think it’s unfair to say his football is too pragmatic or one-dimensional because, if you look at his sides, he always has creative showmen.
“At Everton now, he’s got Jack Grealish! If he was managing West Ham now, I think there’s a good chance Jack Grealish would be wearing a West Ham shirt.
“Paqueta, for instance [thrived under Moyes]. He’s always had these sorts of players in his sides. He’s not a boring, rigid, pragmatic manager. And I think now West Ham fans would bite your hands off to have David Moyes back.”
West Ham had concerns about Grealish playing under Graham Potter
It is far too easy to utter the phrase ‘be careful what you wish for’ when discussing Moyes’ West Ham exit.
This certainly felt like a Hammers side in need of a fresh start and a new direction. Moving on from Moyes was maybe not the mistake, then, rather the issues which arose following the ill-advised appointment of Julen Lopetegui as his successor.
It should be said that Grealish did at least enter the thoughts of the West Ham board before Man City’s £100 million misfit joined Everton on a temporary basis.
But, as a source told Hammers News, West Ham had reservations about Grealish’s ability to adapt to the system Potter looked to introduce at the beginning of the campaign. A 3-4-2-1 system he has since moved on from, ironically enough.
“We see Grealish as an individual who has had his troubles and doesn’t track back enough for our system and the way the manager wants to play,” revealed a spokesman for the club’s board.
“But if David Moyes can get him back to what he once was, then it is a great signing for Everton.”
