David Moyes believes his West Ham midfield could be better than it was when they lifted the Europa Conference League in June.
"Could be, I do think that," he said despite losing Declan Rice. "We've tried to get players in who could do certain jobs for us and do well.
"Dec was a super player, and if we can get anywhere close to being that level with Declan then we'll have done a good job in that recruitment department.
"'I'm sure you know we had a final on June 7, and then we went to Australia as well. Our time was quite short, so that's the reason for a lot of the business being done a bit later.
"And we sold a player [Rice] probably only a month into the transfer window so there's lots of reasons when you look at maybe why we didn't get things done as quick as we'd have liked."
The Hammers have added James Ward-Prowse and Edson Alvarez for a combined £65.4million after selling skipper Rice to Arsenal for almost twice that sum.
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