Moyes declares himself delighted
West Ham boss David Moyes declared himself delighted with the team’s resilient and resolute defensive showing in giving his post match verdict.
It was the first time a 0-0 draw has haunted us at the London Stadium since 2018 in a game which saw the Irons manage 31 per cent possession and just two shots on target.
Moyes declares himself delighted
Moyes, however, declared himself more than happy to take four points off a bogey team which I suppose is one way of looking at things on a night when we were second best without Paqueta and Kudus.
It actually demonstrated how incredibly important those two players have become to us and how grateful we should be to Tim Steidten for finding Kudus and the excellent Alvarez and persuading them to join.
However, a first point of 2024, added to the three wins at the end of December, means ten points from four matches in the festive period and 417 minutes without conceding. All of which equals a successful spell for Moyes and his team in the Premier League…
The other part of it is, of course, you want to perform better with the ball and play better. We defended really well again. We were resilient with what we had, which is a big part of football.
The defensive boys played brilliantly. They really did.
They did brilliantly well. I thought we played better in the first half with the ball than we did in the second half. We turned it over three or four times at the start of the second half and we weren’t having the ball. We were then nearly playing on scraps and counter-attacking, which wasn’t overly nice to watch, but it was a good point to get.
Tomas Souček missed a really big chance for us to go a goal up and, recently, we’ve been taking those opportunities.
We didn’t get it tonight. The chance we had right before half-time, the one from the wide free-kick, I think that one probably made me think ‘goodness me, we’re maybe not going to get anything tonight’.
Players like Pablo Fornals, Dinos Mavropanos, Saïd Benrahma, Angelo Ogbonna and Ben Johnson have not played as much as others, and we had to make a few changes tonight. I actually think, against a good Brighton team who had to make changes as well, I think it was a good result.
It’s been a brilliant festive period. For us to win three and draw one game, it’s been a good period for us. We’re always looking to judge it on the performances and I didn’t really enjoy this one, but we got what I think was a hugely important result for us against one of the top teams in the country.
Of course we are thrilled with 10 points from four games, and Moyes can easily defend a goalless draw in hindsight. But we were awful, particularly second half, and he should have done more. Every time I see the opposition sub on at least three players with time to change the game. Moyes one for one never changes anything,band sticking Mubama alone up front for the long ball was embarrassing