Photograph: Lee Smith/Reuters
David Moyes described Jermain Defoe as “priceless” and “indispensable” to Sunderland as he emphasised that any £6m bid West Ham United may be preparing for the former England striker is destined to fail.
Although Defoe is now 34 years old, his goals almost single-handedly kept Sunderland in the Premier League last season and once again their survival hopes apparently rest inside the shooting boots of the former West Ham United, Portsmouth and Tottenham Hotspur forward.
“No, a £6m bid for Jermain would not be even considered,” said Moyes as he prepared to take his side to face his former employers at Manchester United on Boxing Day. “I don’t think any price would buy Jermain – he’s priceless, his goals are so valuable to us. I wouldn’t even think about any offer. Without Jermain we’d be really struggling.”
Sunderland’s manager half-suspects Defoe, seemingly top of Slaven Bilic’s January shopping list, has hit upon the secret of eternal youth. “His stats have been brilliant in 2016,” said Moyes. “I don’t see him as a 34-year-old – he trains like he’s much younger, he trains every day and nobody can say they see a decline in him.”
Defoe scored 18 goals in 34 appearances last season and has eight in 18 this season, an extraordinary strike rate for a man often operating as a lone forward in a struggling side. Tottenham Hotspur’s Harry Kane is the only Englishman to have bettered those goalscoring feats during the past calendar year.
Although Moyes – who has lost his influential midfielder Jan Kirchhoff for at least three months after the German underwent cartilage surgery on a knee – has no compunction about deploying Defoe as a solitary spearhead, he feels Victor Anichebe’s arrival as his new, highly effective and apparently reborn, attacking partner is bringing the best out in him.
“I think it suits Jermain to have someone closer to him,” said Moyes who offered Anichebe, then a free agent, a lifeline in September. “But Jermain showed last year he can score goals on his own as well.”
Anichebe and Defoe attended the club Christmas party-cum-karaoke night held for Sunderland’s players, staff and their partners in a local Italian restaurant. “It was very old-fashioned and very good,” said Moyes. “We had a nice meal and then the karaoke which always helps. Every player was there, which says a lot.”
