Moyes Must Avoid Duff Move!

Brighton's out of favour defender Shane Duffy has 'suddenly' become a target for David Moyes, apparently duffy is a player who has been 'coveted' by the Hammers manager for some time. Hmmm something fishy about this one, at 28 years old he hardly fits the 'young and energetic' profile of player that Moyes has outlined he wants to acquire, and his recent performances for the Seagulls did little to quicken the heart rate, his potential arrival at the London Stadium has been greeted with horror by many fans, so is he really that bad, is he any good and is he in demand?

West Ham are not the only club linked with the 28-year-old, Celtic who the Irishman grew up supporting have also expressed an interest in the Central defender so a move to Parkhead this summer may well appeal to Duffy more than moving to East London. Like the Irons Celtic are strapped for cash, despite the payments they receive from European competitions, those funds are used to offset the lack of 'proper' TV money from the major sports media, however they may try use Australian playmaker Tom Rogic who interests Brighton in a swap bid.

Before the suggestion of any swap deal Celtic were told to pay £2 Million to take Duffy on loan, this initially put West Ham in the driving seat but there has not been a frenzied rush to get a deal over the line, particularly from West Ham which leads us back to the 'fishy' element. Is Duffy even worth pursuing? The purported £5 Million price tag is par to the course for a post Covid valuation previously he was valued at £ 8.5 Million, not a bargain but not a fund bleeder either, however his wages are quite high at Brighton, he is one of their highest earners, on £45,000 per week. The plus side is that his injury record is excellent, with only one major career injury which was a Metatarsal Fracture sustained in March 2017 which kept him out for 42 days and 8 games. He did however sustain a 'freak' injury early on in his career, in May 2010 Duffy got seriously injured after colliding with a goalkeeper during a training match, he underwent emergency surgery after lacerating his liver and losing over 3 litres of blood, but his recovery was rapid and complete.

Duffy has three years left on his Brighton contract, but having fallen out with manager Graham Potter since his arrival there is a mutual desire for the player to leave, he only played a third of Brighton's games last season and his wages are unsustainable for Brighton to keep him as a bench warmer, which does rather beg the question 'how would he 'fit in' at West Ham'? Or more pertinently why is there a need for him in the first place? We asked a cross section of 'younger' Hammers fans through Ed Jnr's social media site and the response was entirely in the negative, with the over riding comments being " Have we just started to get rid of all the old crap just to replace it with another load of shit?"

The sentiment might have been put more eloquently, but in essence there is more than a fair degree of truth behind it, decent player that he is, Shane Duffy is a 'journeyman' defender, and with no disrespect meant he did end up at Brighton for a reason. In our opinion Duffy is no better than Fabian Balbuena, so unless there has been a serious offer put in for Balbuena that is not in the public domain, there seems absolutely no reason to use up a large chunk of the small transfer budget available on this 'mooted' transfer.

Finally, much has been made of the fact that David Moyes worked with Duffy as a youth player coming through the ranks at Everton, that is as may be, however during the entire time Moyes was manager Duffy only ended up playing 8 first team games, the rest of the time he was continuously loaned out before eventually moving to Blackburn in 2014 for £500,000.

Perhaps in better times Shane Duffy would have been a useful addition to the squad as a back up, but given the Covid-19 impact on finances and the fact that the 'Pellegrinophile' nicked all the money from the transfer kitty, such a move cannot be justified. - Ed