Moyes delivers his Irons match verdict

David Moyes handed out plaudits to his Hammers squad after they had battled out the bravest of  displays against Manchester City.

This was a performance all about the Hammers and just for once there was nobody complaining that a top team had been at their worst as we gained a fully justified point.

A top first half performance, in which we had taken the lead through a magnificent goal from Michail Antonio, was followed by a second of amazing defensive resilience.

This is a Hammers team performing like none we have seen in a very long time and the manager could hardly have been more pleased although he admitted he wants to take a proper look at that Antonio beautye Hammers goal on television.

That he is building something pretty special at the club is obvious even to the most serious critic of his managerial abilities and he now has a squad of which we can all increasingly confident.

Commenting on the performance at https://www.whufc.com/news/articles/2020/october/24-october/david-moyes-we-showed-brilliant-character-stuck-it-and-were he said: “Somebody said to me before the game that we’ve lost to Manchester City 5-0 and 4-0 in our home games recently and I thought ‘Oh my goodness, I don’t want to hear that’ but today was different.

Today we felt more confident and we believed we had a chance. It wasn’t a big chance, but the chance there was there for us, we took it, we stuck at it and we kept going, that’s for sure.

It was a brilliant defensive performance because of the quality Manchester City possess and the goals they score.

They beat Porto 3-1 in the Champions League in midweek, so it was always going to be really hard for us and I have to say the boys did really well and they stuck at their task.

We don’t want to be a team which is conceding lots of goals. We want to be hard to beat, hard to play against and today showed that.

Of Antonio’s goal he said: It’s sort of thing as a kid you always wanted to score an overhead kick, that’s for sure, and I’ll get a chance to see it tonight and see what it looks like.

We had to bring him off against Spurs with something a wee bit the same. He’s just feeling something a little bit in his hamstring. We think he feels it’s just cramping so it’s not serious, but we’re not too sure.

Obviously, it’s worrying me that it’s two games in a row that he’s felt it. He’s really important to us so we’re going to have to do the right thing and try and look after him when we can and it might be the odd time we’re not able to use him.”

 

About Hugh5outhon1895

Hugh Southon is a lifelong Iron and the founding editor of ClaretandHugh. He is a national newspaper journalist of many years experience and was Bobby Moore's 'ghost' writer during the great man's lifetime. He describes ClaretandHugh as "the Hammers daily newspaper!" Follow on Twitter @hughsouthon