David Moyes praises West Ham United 'record bids' after failed chase for Leeds United star pair

The Whites pair were among a number of what Moyes describes as 'top players throughout Europe' that West Ham tried to sign in the January transfer window.

Sources have told the YEP that West Ham were willing to spend in the region of £50m for Phillips, although Leeds maintain no formal offer was made. Leeds did make it clear that they received interest in the form of phone calls, but they had no intention of selling their Brazilian winger or England midfielder.

Moyes hopes Hammers fans will recognise that their club did all they could to get the right players in before the deadline passed, even if there were no new arrivals.

“[Monday] was a late night," Moyes told West Ham TV."I would have loved to have said we’d got everything done and dusted early doors but, look, it wasn’t for the want of trying, that’s for sure. West Ham supporters can be reassured that we were really ambitious in what we were trying to do. We were really ambitious in trying to get good players and players who could help us and make a difference. We’ve also got Jarrod Bowen and it would be very difficult to get a better back-up to Micky Antonio than Jarrod. We were always looking to try and find replacements in several areas, but it just became pretty difficult in the end and we missed out on one or two late on. Overall, all I can say is that the board have been fantastic. We probably made three record transfer bids from the club in this January window and let’s be fair, January is never really a great time. We’ve been quite good in January in the main and in the last few Januaries we’ve been here we’ve signed players and sort of done quite well, but this one for some reason became tougher. I also believe it’s probably been tougher because we’re looking at a much different level of player now and trying to attract some of the top players throughout Europe.”

The players West Ham wanted also included Benfica's Darwin Nunez, for whom a club record bid was reportedly placed and subsequently rejected.

Moyes says it only made sense to try and sign players of a certain calibre.

“Well, I think that's one thing I want to do is I want to make sure that the supporters at West Ham can trust that I'm trying to spend the money wisely and we're trying to bring in good players but also, we don't want to bring people in who I think are only here just to pad it up and maybe makes everybody in the media think that we've done a bit of good business," he said.

"The idea in this job is to try and sign good players.”

Both Phillips and Raphinha are in line for new deals at Elland Road. Their current contracts do not expire until the summer of 2024, but Phillips is on record as saying he wants to put pen to paper on a new deal, while the Whites began talks with Raphinha's agent Deco in recent weeks.