David Moyes had mixed emotions after seeing his West Ham United side take the lead, go behind and snatch a Premier League point in Sunday’s 2-2 draw with Newcastle United at London Stadium.
Playing against a Newcastle team brimming with confidence following recent victories over Manchester City and Paris Saint-Germain, less than 70 hours after defeating SC Freiburg in Germany in the UEFA Europa League, the Irons dug deep.
In-form Tomáš Souček slotted the Hammers in front inside eight minutes at the end of a devastating attack, before Newcastle midfielder Bruno Guimarães escaped an early bath when referee Peter Bankes deemed his second of two foul challenges did not warrant a second yellow, and therefore a red card, much to Moyes’ frustration.
Playing with their full complement, rather than ten men, two goals in six second-half minutes from Alexander Isak appeared to turn the game in the Magpies’ favour, but Eddie Howe’s side were denied victory when West Ham substitute Mohammed Kudus collected the ball and drove an unerring left-foot finish past Nick Pope from the edge of the penalty area.
Speaking to West Ham TV, the manager shared his thoughts on an eventful afternoon in east London.
I’m pleased to get a point.
For long periods in the second half Newcastle were the better team and we were struggling to contain them at times.
I thought the substitutes today made a bit of a difference, especially Mo who gave us a different impetus and obviously then got us the equalizing goal as well, which helped us.
I’m quite pleased with a lot of bits of the performance, especially in the first half when we got in front and we defended well when we needed to.
But I think we played a top side and the level of some of the teams in the Premier League at the moment is really, really high and Newcastle are one of those teams.
We hadn’t really had much of the ball leading up to the point of our first goal, but Emerson made a good run and went around the goalkeeper, so it was another great assist from him and Tomáš got into the box, which we wanted.
I’m pleased for Tomáš as he is making a good contribution with his goals, as did Mo today who got his first one for us, which was great.
We have played Tomáš a bit higher in the last couple of games to try and get him near the box. Today was tough because we couldn’t get enough crosses or balls near the edge of their box, but he made it and he got the goal.
I felt it was a really good point, today.
The biggest part was after going 2-1 down, how we were going to go and if we were going to fold.
They had a chance and we got away with it [when Isak hit the post] which could have obviously finished the game off, but it didn’t and we hung in there and were resilient.
We had our moments and we got a bit from it when we played a bit better with the ball in the last 15 minutes, and Mo helped us in that situation, and we worked a goal, so we were pleased.
We won last week against Sheffield United and we got a point today.
I always knew in between the international breaks that we had four games which were Manchester City, Liverpool, Sheffield United and Newcastle, so it was always going to be hard to take too many points.
In my head, I thought ‘if we can get four points from those games, that won’t be too bad’, but obviously I was hoping to get more.
In between, we had a couple of cup wins as well, which helped, so I’m quite pleased with the way the last month has gone.
