David Moyes discussing the match at Arsenal this evening described the squad as “being in in really good spirits.”
He said: “We know we’ve got a tough game ahead of us, but I’ve got to say we know we can play much better than we did last week and we’re looking forward to doing so. Looking at Arsenal, if you win two trophies in six weeks you’ll be high in confidence. We’ll well aware of that, Mikel Arteta has done a brilliant job in a short space of time and we have to give him a lot of credit for that.
My job is to go there and make sure they don’t have an easy ride. We’ll go there to try to win. We played well against some of the teams, especially at the end of the season when we showed it. If we show that level of form, energy and commitment we can get results again.
Those eight teams might not be the top boys this year, who knows how it’s going to be? We’ve got to aim to be pushing them all the way and I hope in the games we’re able to show it because we did show a lot of good things at Anfield, at Old Trafford and home against Chelsea.
We’ll take every game as it comes and we are very aware that we have a tough run of games on the horizon.
I think we’re closer to getting players in. We’re edging towards it. Behind the scenes we’ve had a couple of offers in for different players and we’re waiting on different outcomes, so I’m hoping we might have some news next week at some time. We’re trying to get ones in who will give us good balance to the squad, but we’re also having to think really clearly to get the right ones and make sure we’re doing the right thing.
The imbalance in the squad comes where we have fewer defenders to choose from. You have to remember we lost Jeremy Ngakia and Pablo Zabaleta, and Winston Reid left on loan as well, so the numbers in those areas have meant we’re short.
We will try to bring defenders in, but we’ll also have the option if I couldn’t get them in that we can use Declan Rice as a defender as well. Maybe I could strengthen in midfield and give the opportunity to free up Declan to play as a defender if I needed to.”
About Sean Whetstone