David Moyes was left with mixed feelings following West Ham United's 1-1 draw with Crystal Palace.
While the manager was delighted with how his Hammers took a 13th-minute lead, thanks to Mohammed Kudus' well-taken finish from Vladimír Coufal's cut-back, there was a frustration that the Irons were unable to hold onto the advantage for a fifth straight win in all competitions.
Odsonne Édouard capitalised on a defensive error from the hosts to slot home early in the second half, while both teams also saw chances to claim all three points go begging in a competitive outing at London Stadium.
The Hammers have made a habit of finding late winners in recent matches but could not force a way through against the Eagles, with the returning Jarrod Bowen seeing a close-range header saved by Sam Johnstone deep into added time.
A point earned should not be under-estimated though. Manager Moyes knows only too well the challenge that every team in the Premier League poses week in and week out, and the share of the spoils means the Irons have lost just once in their last seven matches.
Still, there are areas for praise and parts that need improvement as the team continue on in a busy schedule at the end of 2023.
Today's performance was a little bit mixed.
I’m a bit disappointed we didn’t take all three points but, in the same breath, we’re just not quite getting it on Sundays at 2pm here at London Stadium.
We’d got a goal in front and it was a really good goal. I hoped that it would maybe take us onto the next phase and we didn’t really. As the game went on I felt like we were more liable to score.
We had to make sure we didn’t concede.
But we conceded and we let in a woeful goal. We move on and that happens. We’ve had some good results and scored some late goals recently. We came very close to scoring a late goal and, if we looked at them again, maybe we would say we should have scored.
Crystal Palace have come here and won three or four times against us so we have to think that maybe getting a point here today is a good result.
Mohammed Kudus got another goal and I thought he was excellent.
I really did. Right from the start he caused Tyrick Mitchell, who is a good full-back, a lot of problems. He was probably our brightest spark and our brightest chance to get a goal. He scored a really good goal and it was a good move too, to get us the goal.
He’s settled in well, getting us goals, and in the main a lot of the forward boys – whether it be Tomáš Souček or Mo, or Lucas Paquetá or Jarrod Bowen – have been getting us goals so long may it continue.
Today was the chance for us to knock on the door with the top boys.
I thought we could get it. We’ve all just come back from Serbia in the midweek and the fans who made the trip there will know what that was like. We don’t want to use it as an excuse but there was a little bit of a reason behind it [today].
