David Moyes had every reason to be unhappy at today’s result against Burnley and made no excuses for a draw which virtually everybody believed would be a win.
The Hammers were so poor in the first half but improved sufficiently to grab a point courtesy of Danny Ings who appeared as a sub nine minutes from the end.
He proceeded to see a goal ruled out for offside against Mike Antonio, hit the bar and grabbed the equaliser – not bad for a bloke who hasn’t been given too many chances and revealed that his time at the club has been “tricky.”
Moyes gives his verdict
Moyes made two substitutions at half-time, introducing Michail Antonio and Edson Álvarez, and Lucas Paquetá had pulled a goal back within 30 seconds after the visitors had gone two up.
Then Ings and enjoyed a hugely effective time on the pitch and finally curled a well-struck shot against the crossbar which would have given us a win.
But despite a second half improvement Alphonse Areola made a vital late save to deny Josh Brownhill a winner
Right from the start we looked as if we were going to play quite slow when we needed to play fast, hard and put them under pressure – and we didn’t do. We had a disappointing first half and it was summed up by giving away an own-goal just on half-time to make it 2-0.
We got back and had enough chances to win it, but it was a day when very few decisions went for us, that was for sure. We needed to get an early goal in the second half.
When we got the goal I thought ‘We have a good chance of going on and winning this now’. We could keep going for it, and we did do, but I thought we missed a lot of opportunities to score.
From corner kicks and things getting blocked, we didn’t quite get it. But we got the goal [to level] and we had other opportunities [after that] as well.
We tried to put them under pressure as much as we could, but we gave up quite a few chances as well. We can’t be a team who are giving away two or three goals in a game, we have to be defending much better.
Obviously the boy [David Datro Fofana] scores a screamer for the first goal, but it looked as if we should have won the tackle, the ball then breaks and then he hits it into the top corner.
It’s the sort of game when we’re on top and making chances, then Danny over his career has been brilliant at it.
Unfortunately he’s not quite had his scoring boots on [this season], but today he did. He had one cut off for offside, he scores another, and then he hits the bar. Hopefully that will give him a lot of confidence and it gives us more confidence as well, because we want to play Danny. We want to play him for his goals and what he can do.
We’ll do everything we can on Thursday to get through.
We just need to do as well as we have done for the last two years in Europe. We’ve only been in this situation once, against Seville, and I think everyone knows what we have to do.
We certainly know what we have to do and hopefully the crowd know what part they have to play as well.
This is what gets me going, Moyes says we started slow but wanted to start quick – well you instruct the players mate,and you picked Phillips and JWP in centre mid, no dynamic drive there. We did better when you brought on Antonio and Ings, but it’s all hit and hope with ring rusty players you ignore for long periods then throw in when desperate. Why not groom young and fringe players, keep them involved? Nobody gets it, what are you doing?
Well said, hammerpete6, I’m with you!