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Moyes delivers his match verdict

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Moyes could barely have been happier

David Moyes can’t be judged on what happened at the London Stadium – Manchester City are far too good for us to be playing those sort of games.

However, had anyone wanted to they would have needed to give him the benefit bar one this afternoon and that was in bringing on the same old Benrahma who once again showed what a frustrating individual he can be most of the time.

Beyond that the manager got most of our performance right although it was clear from the little flashes we saw that maybe Mo Kudu would have been a better bet in midfield – or indeed up front – than Mr Soucek.

Having said that we all know just how difficult this game was going to be but I have to say that 1-2 would have been a fairer score line on the balance of play.

Moyes probably thought the same and in his after match presser he declared: ” I thought the optimism we’ve got around the place is  great, coming here thinking we had a chance against Manchester City and being in a good league position. I think it’s a good way to be.

But we’re talking about the champions of the major European competition and the champions of the Premier League and they’re really hard to beat, really hard.

We scored a great goal, we really did, a great goal. We were close to a second on a couple of set pieces. Kurt forced the ‘keeper into a really good save and Mick got away 1v1 and just overran his touch when we could have been in for a chance.

They were the moments against Chelsea which went in our favour when they missed a penalty and Mick got away to make it 2-1, not in an dissimilar situation. It’s small margins and a few of them have gone our way in games, but today we didn’t really take those chances.

Edson and James have been brilliant. They’ve done a brilliant job and started the season incredibly well.

We might need to wait a little bit more time for Dinos and Mo to get settled in, but overall I am really pleased with how they have started.”

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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