Boulaye Dia on West Ham transfer radar as club seek replacement for Sebastien Haller, who joined Ajax for £20.2m last week; Dia has scored 12 goals in 17 Ligue 1 appearances this season; David Moyes admits West Ham are "not quite ready" to start signing players
Wednesday 13 January 2021 21:44, UK
Reims striker Boulaye Dia is a transfer target for West Ham as they seek a replacement for Sebastien Haller.
The 24-year-old is rated at around £10m by the French club and has scored 12 goals in 17 Ligue 1 appearances so far this season.
Dia is one of several strikers who has been linked with West Ham, who are keen to bring in a centre-forward during the current transfer window.
The Hammers last week sold Haller to Ajax for £20.2m - less than half the £45m they paid Eintracht Frankfurt in the summer of 2019.
Haller only scored 10 goals in 48 appearances for West Ham and the club took the decision to recoup some of their outlay with a quickly-completed transfer to Ajax.
The swift nature of that deal has left manager David Moyes searching for a replacement as a matter of some urgency, and in an area of the team he was not expecting to make an alteration this month.
"We got an offer we weren't expecting, it certainly wasn't planned to lose Seb (Haller) in this window," admitted Moyes.
"He has been great for us because he has won us a few games recently but I think it's a really good move for him.
"It's an offer that if maybe we didn't (agree) now, it wouldn't come up again so we just felt it was the right thing to do.
"We've now created room to bring players in - are we ready for that? Not really, but we'll do what we can and bring in what we think are the right players."
The winter transfer window is open until Monday, February 1 at 11pm.
Follow all the news and analysis on Sky Sports News and across Sky Sports' digital platforms, including our dedicated Transfer Centre blog.