David Moyes felt his West Ham United side gave a good account of themselves at Chelsea on Monday night, but were ultimately undone by the more clinical team.
The Hammers could feel with some justification that the 3-0 scoreline flattered their hosts, yet ultimately their tally of seven shots on target to the Hammers’ none proved telling.
West Ham saw plenty of the ball, particularly after the break, and asked questions of their hosts – and Moyes was full of praise for that – saying there were things to take forward into the remainder of the Christmas period.
“I think this was a real big test for us tonight, in fact I’d say maybe it was the biggest test we’ve had in the Premier League this season so far,” the boss explained. “We were coming to a Chelsea side who had lost a couple of games and knew they’d be wounded and looking for a victory.
“I thought we coped with it and did a lot of good things, but we didn’t start the game particularly well and in the end we didn’t finish it well with the goals we conceded.
“Ultimately you have to keep the opposition out of your box and you have to score when you get in theirs.
“We didn’t do either of those well enough against the level of opposition we were playing tonight.”
Moyes was particularly disappointed to concede the opening goal to Thiago Silva from a tenth minute corner, saying his team’s work at that set piece fell short of what he expects.
“It’s the first we’ve conceded from a corner this season so I’m very disappointed with that,” he added. “We knew their strength and we knew what they were capable of, but we didn’t do the job well enough or as well as we have been doing it.
“We grew back into the game and the players tried to do the right things but we just lacked a killer instinct in one box and obviously we needed to have a bit of devilment when it came to defending in the last 20 minutes as well.”
