The Moyes verdict sounds like Moyes excuses

The Moyes verdict sounds like Moyes excuses

By Hughie Southon

David Moyes didn’t seem overly disturbed by our first European defeat in 18 games this evening following the 2-1 defeat by Olympiakos.

Indeed he was pretty laconic about what was a terrible performance against a team which is hardly up there with the Euro giants and had taken only one point from its opening two group games. Instead he claimed that we went into the game with a bigger picture in our heads – Everton at the weekend.

Frankly, his post match comments were pretty weird considering that last season when the Hammers Premier League performances were so poor he was telling us the season was all about Europe!

Now it’s the other way round and it sounds a bit like playing both end against the middle and having your cake and eating it, nor does it sound particularly convincing.

In discussing the game he made it clear of course that we changed a lot of players tonight when after Sunday’s shocker perhaps that wasn’t a bad idea anyway eh?

He went on to say we have  a League Cup game next week and we’d won the first two games in the group, which gave us leeway to make changes tonight.

However, a tad more realistically he said: “But maybe I have to recognise that while we didn’t win through the Conference League games easily, coming to Olympiacos after winning away in Freiburg, which was a good result, this wasn’t a good result and wasn’t a good performance.

In our heads we certainly had a bigger picture in our heads and that was going into Sunday.

I don’t think anybody could say the team we started with wasn’t a good team and wasn’t a team capable of winning or performing. Many of them have been very good players for us over the years and still are.”

He added: ” We’ve had to do this for two years now, where we’ve had to consider what team to play on a Thursday night to have a team ready for a Sunday.

The recovery time, and it’s really difficult to explain if you’re not involved in it, is difficult. If you look at the teams who’ve been involved in it, it’s not easy.

If you change your team, it gives you more fresh players for the Sunday, that’s your hope, so let’s hope we’re fresh for Sunday.”

Err, isn’t that the job though? Sounds like excuses and contradictions to me!