West Ham United manager David Moyes was full of praise for his side after they pushed Bayer Leverkusen to the limit in the second leg of their UEFA Europa League quarter-final.
Trailing 2-0 from the first leg, the Hammers got at the newly-crowned Bundesliga champions from the off and had them rattled after Michail Antonio headed home a 13th minute opener.
Further chances came via the boots of Michail Antonio and Jarrod Bowen, but the Irons could not quite find the second goal their relentless pressure deserved, allowing Leverkusen to regroup and stifle the contest after the break.
Ultimately, Jeremie Frimpong’s deflected strike in the final minute levelled the scores on the night and sealed a 3-1 aggregate success that the visitors – now undefeated in 44 games this season – but this was a result they really had to work for.
Moyes could not fault his charges at the final whistle.
The team did brilliantly.
They were fantastic and they deserve all the plaudits for their performance. They were magnificent from the start to the end.
We couldn’t quite keep the energy up as much in the second half, but great credit to them.
We’d earned the right to score the first goal.
If anything, we should probably have scored three in the first half and we didn’t take the chances when we should have done.
That was probably the biggest reason why we didn’t get it.
Over two games I thought we played really well against Leverkusen.
They were different types of games. In the first leg we were much deeper and defended incredibly well for the best part of 85 minutes.
Tonight we were completely different and put them under a lot of pressure. Really we should be been 2-0, possibly 3-0 up at half-time.
I’m proud, but I always think we can give most teams a game.
We’ve had the likes of Man City here and Liverpool here over the years, and I’ve always said I want to give the big teams a game.
I thought we gave them a really good game tonight. Just not quite enough and that’s the difference.
They’re probably at a higher level and they’ve certainly got more to pick from coming off the bench, which they had again tonight.
It made it difficult for us to keep up the same levels of energy we had in the first half tonight.
We would love to do it again and be back in Europe next season.
We’ve really enjoyed the three years we’ve had and this was the third quarter-final.
We’ve given West Ham supporters European football at a good level, we’ve won all the groups we’ve been in and we’ve come close in the quarter-finals tonight.
We pushed a really good team close and were just short of one or two things to make the difference.
