David Moyes has paid tribute to Michail Antonio as he prepares to make his 300th West Ham appearance, admitting the Jamaican’s longevity has helped paper over the club’s well-documented striker struggles.
Antonio signed for the Hammers from Nottingham Forest in 2015 and has gone on to become the club’s all-time leading goalscorer in the Premier League.
Across all competitions, the forward has scored 79 times in 299 outings and will likely become the 38th player to make 300 appearances for the club when Moyes takes his side to face Wolves on Saturday.
Antonio was played at right-back and on the wing in the early part of his Hammers career before eventually establishing himself as first-choice No9 in a conversion that Moyes has used before and since in the cases of Marko ArnautoviÄ and Jarrod Bowen.
"He's shown loyalty to West Ham over a long time,” Moyes said. “He's aging like we all are but he's doing the job well.
“Every time I've sat in this seat, most people have asked, 'When are you buying a striker?' But the problem is over the last three, four years there's been a lack of strikers, availability and trying to get players at the right value.
“So, we decided to give Mich a chance to play up front and he's done brilliantly well for us.”
West Ham have had a long-standing issue in signing centre-forwards, with Gianluca Scamacca the latest to flop having been sold last summer, just 12 months after his £30.5million switch from Sassuolo.
Moyes decided not to sign a direct replacement for the Italian international and has instead relied on Antonio and Bowen to lead the line this term.
The latter has enjoyed a superb campaign, with 15 league goals so far, and had at one stage made the centre-forward berth his own, but has been shifted back to the right-wing in recent weeks following Antonio’s return from a knee issue.
“Mick, we never expected to go away,” Moyes added. “Buying a centre-forward nowadays is such difficult business, to get one who you think can come in and make a difference. To get the right one at the right price is so difficult.
“I often think that it puts a manager under pressure, signing a centre-forward. My experience tells me that. If you buy a centre-forward and he doesn’t score the goals, you probably lose your job. That means unless you’re going to buy one at top money that you know is proven, it becomes very difficult for managers.
“We’ve tried for years to find people that we believed might be right. If you look back over the last two or three years at the number of centre-forwards [people have] named that might be coming here, there might be quite a lot of them that have failed and they wouldn’t have been any good.
“We’ve missed out on ones we would’ve like when you look back, maybe Ollie Watkins, people like that. But it’s a journey, sometimes you get it right and sometimes you don’t.”
