West Ham United boss David Moyes could not fault his team’s endeavour as their Carabao Cup campaign came to an end with a narrow 2-1 defeat to Tottenham Hotspur on Wednesday night.
The teams traded quickfire goals in the opening period, as Steven Bergwijn’s opener was swiftly cancelled out by Jarrod Bowen.
However, Lucas Moura then struck equally as quickly and that proved to be the winner, despite the visitors – roared on by close to 6,000 travelling fans – pushing hard in their quest for the leveller.
Speaking at the final whistle, the manager felt his team deserved the chance to take the tie to penalties at least, but were undone by a couple of moments in their own box.
The boys gave everything tonight.
They kept going and were very good, but we gave them two terrible goals defensively, which in the big games you can’t afford to do.
We didn’t do well enough in those moments, but look, it was a brilliant effort. We played really well tonight – we brought a big support here so I’m pleased we gave the supporters something to shout about. It was certainly an improved performance from where we’ve been in recent weeks.
It was a response to how we’ve been playing recently.
We’ve been waiting for something to click and I thought tonight was a bit closer to it. Obviously what really counts in football is the result and we didn’t get that result tonight.
There were long periods when we played well, and we there were times in the first half when we needed to dig in too.
That’s what we needed – us to defend well and do the right things and it comes down to small distances. A couple of inches, not diving into a tackle and staying on your feet. It’s the small things that make the difference.
That’s the kind of performance I expect from us though.
I expect us to play at a high level and challenge. We can’t win all the games, but at least tonight there were signs that we’ll win more games if we play like we did tonight.
We wanted to stay in the Cup. We’ve had a good run at it and some people have had games in this competition. We had a great result at Manchester United away, we had a great result against Man City at home and the draws to be fair have not been overly kind to us.
We’d have like to have got the fans a win and we came close to it in the end.