It might be a little over a week before the English domestic season pauses for the FIFA World Cup finals in Qatar, but West Ham United still have three fixtures to navigate.
With Crystal Palace kicking off a hectic final seven days, manager David Moyes is determined to finish this opening part of the campaign strongly.
Having secured top spot and progression to the UEFA Europa Conference League round of 16, a top half placing in the Premier League and a Carabao Cup fourth round berth are up for grabs over these next three games.
The boss looked ahead to that first meeting with Palace in his pre-match press conference…
We’d like to finish in a strong position before the World Cup.
Some of our performances have merited more and we need to turn that into goals. We’ve probably been a little behind on them, but good performances tend to lead to good results. I’m hoping that’s the case.
There were plenty of positive elements to the performance at Old Trafford last week.
We looked as though we were more likely to score, David de Gea made a few good saves, and we had a game where we felt we competed against another top team.
There were periods in the game where they were the better team, but there were also periods when we were the better team. That’s good from my point of view and I see that as making progress and I see that as a continued climb to try and be a side who can be around the top more often.
I think Crystal Palace are a side who have signed very well.
They’ve made good signings over the past couple of years, they’ve built in a way they think is right for what they’ve got. Patrick Vieira has done a really good job and the football’s good.
There were a lot of foundations put in by Roy Hodgson and Palace have always been a hard team to play. They’ve got an incredible support at their stadium too.
I think there are a lot of good things about Crystal Palace and we know we’re going to have a hard game.
The new signings have made a good contribution.
It’s taken a little bit longer than we’d have liked and I think if we’d had a lot of them for more pre-season friendlies it could have helped us, but I have to say we’ve really enjoyed the new boys who have come in.
The players who have been with us the last couple of years are performing much better as well, so we feel better about ourselves but we need to show that by the points we gain.
I’ve not really had any conversations with the players [about the potential of injuries before the World Cup].
They’re employed by West Ham United and that’s where their responsibility is. We’re very mindful that a lot of them are looking forward to playing in the World Cup, but we’ve got a job to do here and I’ve got supporters and owners and everybody else who wants to see the team winning. That’s my position.
From our point of view we’re relatively new back in Europe and we’ve had a really good group stage two years in a row.
It’s big credit to the boys having not played in Europe that often. You look at the teams who have been knocked out in play-off games, or not got through the group stages – I can think of a couple last year who didn’t get through these stages.
So, from that point of view I think we deserve a bit of credit which we accept but, look, we don’t get a trophy for winning the group stage and we know we’re going to have to play well in the second half of the season to progress further.
