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Moyes rues huge missed opportunities

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David Moyes says the Hammers missed an awful lot of chances in their Europa League semi-final first leg against Eintracht Frankfurt.

The Irons were beaten 2-1 at the London Stadium, with goals from Ansgar Knauff and Daichi Kamada proving decisive.

Mikey Antonio scored the Irons’ goal, making it 1-1, but the Hammers were unable to take advantage after levelling the scores.

The Hammers hit the crossbar in the last-minute, when Jarrod Bowen attempted an audacious bicycle kick and left the woodwork shaking, while Said Benrahma hit the post with a long-range effort, and Bowen earlier saw an effort deflected onto the post by goalkeeper Kevin Trapp.

And Moyes was disappointed with the number of chances missed by the Irons, ahead of next week’s second leg in Germany.

Speaking after the game, the Hammers boss told BT Sport, via BBC: “Not what we wanted – we didn’t play well enough to get a result tonight but it’s still there, it’s not gone. We’ll go to the second leg probably not fancied and do what we can to still make it.

“I didn’t change too much [after first goal], I thought we deserved to get back in the game and if we had showed enough quality in the final third we might’ve got back in front but we didn’t. Started slow in second half and gave away a poor goal for the second.

“I think we missed an awful lot of opportunities to create chances, we should’ve made more, we had chances to cross the ball better and didn’t take them, we missed big chances in the box. We made some chances and had one or two efforts, we’ll have to make more next week.”

The Irons will play Arsenal this weekend in a game that is likely to see a number of changes ahead of playing Frankfurt in the decisive leg.

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A journalist with 10 years' experience of working on National newspapers, now chief reporter covering the club that I've loved since I was a boy. Upton Park remains the greatest football stadium ever built.