Sign up NOW for your daily Stoke City newsletter straight to your inbox Subscribe Thank you for subscribing See our privacy notice Invalid Email

West Ham have already poached one Stoke City star in 2017 and the Mirror claims they want to start 2018 by nicking another.

David Moyes apparently wants Joe Allen to go in his midfield behind former Potter Marko Arnautovic and help steer the Hammers away from the relegation zone.

Allen, signed from Liverpool for £13m in 2016, was wanted by old club Swansea in the summer but is a central figure under Mark Hughes .

(Image: Tony Marshall)

He has been a contender for Stoke’s player of the year so far next to Darren Fletcher in central midfield, although he has started the last two matches in a more advanced role.

It is difficult to see any circumstance when Hughes would be prepared to let Allen leave next month, not least to a rival in a congested bottom half of the Premier League.

Hughes is targeting incomings of his own over the next few weeks to make sure Stoke do not get dragged deeper into the battle at the bottom of the Premier League.

Allen is also focused on helping the side push up the table.

The 27-year-old said: “We want to end the year on a great note and take that into next year.

“We’re hopeful we can be that much better. The feeling is that we have turned a little bit of a corner and let’s take that into next year.

“Hopefully, we’re starting to learn from our mistakes. We’ve been a bit slow with it. It’s been drilled into us, in all fairness, but the Premier League is unforgiving.

“You can’t lose your heads and start chasing games because teams pick you off and punish you.

“The signs are promising that we’ve learnt from that. It was a pretty positive feeling to come away with a point. We obviously wanted all three, but to go behind, in previous times, we might have folded, lost our shape and been run ragged but that didn’t happen.”