You always need to take it with a pinch of salt if a player or manager is linked to your club under the premise that contract talks are not going well.
Perhaps there is a chance that they want a new challenge and the time is right, but we’ve seen it too many times where someone is simply using the media as leverage to get what they want from a current employer.
Time will tell if that’s the case for David Moyes at Celtic, but a report from Hammers News has given an interesting overview of his current situation.
They confirm that his contract has automatically been extended for a year so it would take some compensation or a resignation from him to trigger the move to Glasgow, while they also cite a close source which claims that he would be interested in the role.
The problem for Celtic is they do go on to say that they think he’s still leaning towards staying at West Ham, and their current situation means it’s impossible to get him signed up quickly.
They still have a genuine chance of playing Champions League football next season so he’s never going to walk away from that when it’s possible.
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It’s also suggested that this talk about the Celtic job is going to spark some contract talks into life with the West Ham board, so it does just sound like the interest is being played up to help his contract situation.
At least from Celtic’s point of view Moyes would come in with a high stock as he’s rebuilding his reputation as the manager who did great things with Everton rather than the Man United failure, but that stint at Old Trafford does have ominous signs too.
There were suggestions at the time that he simply didn’t understand how big the job was, and he couldn’t get used to the expectation of winning every game – he famously praised his team’s performance despite an uninspiring loss to Liverpool which showed he couldn’t shake the Everton mindset at all.
Perhaps that means his strength is getting mid table teams to overperform and there’s nothing wrong with that, but between that and his contract situation it’s hard to see him being a credible target for the Celtic job next season.