David Moyes says West Ham United’s European dream is far from over, despite the disappointment of Sunday’s 1-0 home Premier League defeat by Everton.
The Hammers controlled the game for long periods at London Stadium, enjoyed 69% possession, completed nearly three times as many passes as the Blues and spent 37% of the second half in Everton’s final third, but failed to turn that dominance into shots on target.
The Irons failed to test Everton goalkeeper Jordan Pickford once as Saïd Benrahma headed the best chance of the first half over the crossbar, and Vladimír Coufal struck the inside of the post with a right-foot shot in the second.
Both of those opportunities were missed after the visitors had taken virtually the only clear-cut chance they created, as Ben Godfrey was allowed to stride forward before playing in Dominic Calvert-Lewin, who got goal side of Craig Dawson and finished low past Łukasz Fabiański.
West Ham's cause was not helped when Manuel Lanzini and then Aaron Cresswell were forced off with groin injuries, but still the hosts pushed hard for a leveller, only to find Everton's back line in resilient form.
The nature of the defeat left the manager frustrated, but he still believes his side can regroup and collect enough points from their final three matches – away at Brighton & Hove Albion and West Bromwich Albion and a home finale in front of 10,000 fans against Southampton – to qualify for Europe.
We were just a bit not quite there in the attacking third and we couldn’t make the moments.
They defended well, they had three big centre-halves in there for most of the game and they made it hard for us.
Losing players to injury, like we did with Manu and Aaron, is football and we have to accept it.
It looked like Manu was controlling the game and we were controlling the game and Manu was very good at the time he got injured.
But this is what happens, you bring people in and you get them in for games and they break down very quickly, so we have got to try and get players who are robust and for most of the season we’ve had robust players.
One defensive mistake cost us.
I’m shaking my head at the thought of it because, at this level, it can’t happen. We’ve got to be better.
It might sound simple, but it just can’t happen. We’ve just got to do better.
It’s not over. Far from it. We’ve got three games to play and we’ll keep going for it.
I think I take encouragement from the way we played today and what we tried to do. We’re trying to be better on the ball and play better and we’re definitely showing signs of that.
Some of the players had outstanding games, they really did but, ultimately, we didn’t have enough in the final third and the moments we got the chances, we weren’t good enough to take them.
We’re ready and we’ll regroup, as we’ve got three games to go in a week.
We’ve been very good and we’ve got to keep it going now, but I’m disappointing I’ve not got something out of today and disappointed we didn’t get enough shots on target or things around the goal.
