Opinion: What will West Ham’s new signing bring to David Moyes squad?

Here we take a look at what new £30m signing Nayef Aguerd can bring to the squad for the 2022/23 season…

After an excellent season with French Ligue 1 side Rennes, Aguerd has arrived at the London Stadium as the club’s third most expensive signing in history.

After helping his former side to a Champions League spot last term, Aguerd was regarded as one of the best central defenders in Ligue 1 – proven by WhoScored who ranked him the fourth highest performing centre-back with a 6.88 rating.

Not only that, but the 26-year-old is a Morocco national team regular, who starts almost every game for them. After making his debut for his national side in 2016, when he was just 19, he has gone on to earn an extra 16 caps.

Now, he can form a formidable partnership with French centre-back Kurt Zouma who performed exceptionally well for the Hammers last season.

What does he bring to the side?

His 6ft 2in frame offers West Ham a strong and tall central defender, that can show a physical presence within the back four.

This in turn makes him excellent at aerial battles at both ends of the pitch, which bodes well with how successful the Hammers are at set-pieces. 

On top of this, he is also fairly agile and can move quickly to stop defenders from beating him one-on-one. This makes him very impressive at stopping clear-cut goal opportunities.

Evidence of this is shown within his stats. Just last season he produced 3.8 clearances, 0.9 tackles and 0.8 interceptions per game in all competitions, helping Rennes concede the fourth least amount of goals in the league.

In addition, he brings lots of energy and passion to the field when playing and he should certainly be a good fit in a side that will want to compete in both domestic and European competitions this season.

Aguerd seems like he could be very beneficial to David Moyes ahead of the 2022/23 season, but as well as this he should be able to be strong enough to compete with the physicality and testing nature of the Premier League.

Hopefully, for supporters, the Moroccan will prove to be a good signing, but the evidence is clear to see that he has the potential to impress in claret and blue.