David Moyes admitted his West Ham United side were simply beaten by a better team in Manchester City in their 2022/23 Premier League opener.
Goals in each half from Erling Haaland secured the three points for the reigning Premier League Champions at London Stadium in a match where the Hammers struggled to wrestle the ball away from Pep Guardiola’s team for extended periods.
The away side claimed over 75 per cent of the possession in Sunday’s encounter and Moyes said it was hard to gauge his team’s showing based on the limited time they had with the ball, but was able to take heart from the defensive resiliency the home side showed.
The manager spoke to West Ham TV about City’s adaptive tactics, competitive debuts for Gianluca Scamacca and Flynn Downes, and the record attendance at London Stadium…
It’s difficult to assess our performance today.
You could only watch Manchester City control all of the game, and they were too good for us today. Tactically, they changed what they were doing and they altered things that we had worked during the week to try and restrain them on, and try to do the job that we did at the end of last season.
But they altered things today and they made it very difficult for us, and we weren’t able to quickly change and challenge the things that they did.
We just couldn’t wrestle the ball from Manchester City.
We couldn’t get any of the ball and they just had too many players in the middle of the pitch. It was easy for them to get the ball wide when we tried to fill the middle of the pitch, because then the space became wider in the wide areas and they’re very good at getting down the sides of you.
They played with nearly five players on the front line and their two full-backs played inside, alongside Rodri, and then with two centre-halves. It was a game that we never really got any amount of the ball in and, I have to say, we were well beaten today.
I’m glad to get the new signings some minutes today.
They came on at a good time, when there was a little bit where we just got a little bit of action and we showed signs that we were a little bit bitter. But ultimately we’re just lacking that little bit at the moment. We couldn’t get a hold of the ball and, when we got it, we couldn’t keep it.
But there’s no criticism of the players today because I think it was more to do with the opposition. I do hope though, and I’ve said this many times here, that we can give the big teams tough games. I think we have done over the last year, but today we didn’t give a big team a tough game.
The noise from the fans was great.
It was a tough game for the home supporters to have because there wasn’t too much for them to cheer, because City had so much of the ball. But it’s great that we’re getting that support and we hope to put on a better performance for them in the future. I hope we will be able to challenge these teams as we go along.
