As you would expect of any football manager after seeing his team lose, David Moyes was not happy after Saturday’s 3-1 Premier League defeat by Manchester City, but the West Ham United boss was proud of the way his team performed.
The Irons took the lead for the fifth top-flight game in a row to start the 2023/24 season through James Ward-Prowse’s well-taken diving header before half-time, but ultimately could not hold off the reigning treble winners, despite a determined defensive display and another world-class performance from goalkeeper Alphonse Areola.
The concession of an equaliser to Jérémy Doku within 60 seconds of the restart set the Hammers back psychologically, before Pep Guardiola’s relentless side finally broke down their resistance in the closing quarter through goals from Bernardo Silva and Erling Haaland.
In between, Kurt Zouma and Michail Antonio were denied by Ederson, Edson Álvarez was forced off through injury and Moyes sent on Saïd Benrahma and Mohammed Kudus in pursuit of victory, but ultimately the champions proved too strong.
I thought for long periods today we were always in the game and always had a chance.
Even at 2-1 down, we were still in the game and we were more than in the game when we were 1-0 up, going in at half-time feeling really confident and coming out feeling ‘hey, let’s do it again and get through this 45 minutes’, but the timing of the first goal wasn’t good.
I was more disappointed with the second goal. I thought it was poor, the second goal but, overall, I was pleased with how the players have performed and what we’ve tried to do.
The game had started to get away from us a little bit when it was one-each, and we wanted to see if we could make some changes and be positive and try and alter it, but it probably didn’t work as we’d have liked.
The first half wasn’t exactly what we wanted them to do, but it was the way we planned it, because we were always going to be without the ball for long periods.
If we could get the first goal, we knew that would be very important, but I didn’t want to see my goalie making world-class saves every five minutes or so and us having to defend things off the line as often as we did! But they did the job they were there to do and they did it really well.
I would like us to have wrestle a bit more possession off them and found a way of getting the ball back sooner, but they were very good.
Edson Álvarez got injured and he had been booked before, which was a worry for me because we had talked about it and he had given away another free-kick outside the box.
We were a bit worried what he was going to get away with, but Edson played really well and when we took him off, things probably changed around a little bit.
But also we tried to change to try and make it more positive and get a couple more chances to maybe take them on and beat them.
Against Man City, everyone wants you to open up and play an expansive game but the minute you do it, you’re more liable of losing, so that’s why we always make ourselves resilient, tough to play against and hard to beat.
We scored a great goal, we really did, a great goal.
We were close to a second on a couple of set pieces. Kurt forced the ‘keeper into a really good save and Mick got away 1v1 and just overran his touch when we could have been in for a chance.
They were the moments against Chelsea which went in our favour when they missed a penalty and Mick got away to make it 2-1, not in an unsimilar situation. It’s small margins and a few of them have gone our way in games, but today we didn’t really take those chances.
Edson and James have been brilliant.
They’ve done a brilliant job and started the season incredibly well.
We might need to wait a little bit more time for Dinos and Mo to get settled in, but overall I am really pleased with how they have started.
I think this one was always a challenge, no matter what.
I thought the optimism we’ve got around the place was great, coming here thinking we had a chance against Manchester City and being in a good league position. I think it’s a good way to be.
But we’re talking about the champions of the major European competition and the champions of the Premier League and they’re really hard to beat, really hard.
