Source: Daily_Mail
No class: Moyes raps City boss Hughes as Lescott transfer wrangle escalates
David Moyes accused Mark Hughes of using underhand tactics to unsettle Joleon Lescott and claimed that it had cost Manchester City any chance of landing their latest target.
The Everton manager also taunted his rival, on the eve of another Barclays Premier
League campaign, by reflecting on City’s summer spending, saying: ‘If I’d got through that much, I would be thinking I might have to go out and win the league!’
Hitting out at Hughes’s conduct over the past month, Moyes admitted Lescott’s mind had been ‘twisted’ by City’s relentless pursuit but urged Everton supporters not to turn against the England defender in today’s game against Arsenal.
Weeks of simmering ill-feeling between the clubs spilled over after City manager Hughes again went public over his wish to pair Lescott with Kolo Toure and announced that his club were talking to ‘the people who make the decisions’ at Goodison Park.
It brought a withering response from Moyes, who revealed Everton were considering
lodging a complaint with the Premier League and said City should learn from Real Madrid’s transfer dealings.
‘There has been no ongoing dialogue between City and Everton that I know of, unless they are talking to people they shouldn’t be,’ he said.
‘Mark Hughes says they’re talking to the people who make the decisions. Well, he knows who makes the decisions here, and it’s me. I control all football matters, yet he hasn’t once picked up the phone and given me a call.
‘All this talk has disrupted us and twisted Joleon’s mind. Maybe it was always their intention to do that to one of their closest rivals. Joleon is a player we think the world of and want to keep, and it’s clear we value him more than City do, judging by the offers they’ve made.
‘I don’t know whether there would be grounds for reporting the way they’ve gone about this, but we may look at that after the window shuts. The plain fact is we’ve had two calls from City, so I don’t know who all these ongoing conversations have been with.
‘I’m very disappointed Joleon is constantly being put in this sort of position, and it strikes me City are trying to destabilise him and us. We will have to see if I can twist his head back to how it was. He is in the squad against Arsenal, and I would expect anyone who plays for Everton to get a good reception from the fans.’
Hinting at the amount it would have taken to prise Lescott away, with three years left on his contract, Moyes added: ‘You just hope people will do things correctly, but that hasn’t happened here. They should look at how Real Madrid tied up Cristiano Ronaldo by paying what United considered the right price and doing it in time for United to spend the money, if they wanted.
‘City made their first offer four weeks ago and their second at the end of July. Not only were they way short on valuation, they left it far too late. That’s the end of it, and if we find anyone from their club has been in contact with Joleon, it will be breach of contract. We won’t stand for that.’
Hughes, whose team travel to Blackburn Rovers today, was eager to talk about City’s progress yesterday. He said: ‘We keep on reminding ourselves of how far we have come in the last 12 months. We did good business in January, we’ve done excellent business this summer and it may take a number of more windows until we are really at that point in time when we can say we’re one of the top teams in the Premier League.
‘We’ve made huge strides in a short space of time and sometimes we have to check ourselves when we have disappointments and remind ourselves how far we have come.
‘I don’t think our spending will be on this scale again. The quality we have brought in will sustain us. I’m sure we will have to add in the windows ahead of us but not on the scale of this window.’
