David Moyes was left to rue a brace of late Bayer Leverkusen goals on Thursday night, which left his side with an uphill task in their UEFA Europa League quarter-final tie.
The Irons had to dig in against the Bundesliga champions-elect and came within seven minutes of taking the contest back to London with the scoresheet blank, only for substitutes Jonas Hofmann and Victor Boniface to net from corners late in the game.
It means that Bayer Leverkusen, who extended their unbeaten run this term to a 42nd game, lead by two at the halfway point of the last eight match-up.
West Ham came from one goal down to defeat their German counterparts SC Freiburg in the previous round, but know this tie is a step up and the manager says he will have to find extra from his charges - without the suspended Emerson and Lucas Paquetá after both were booked at the BayArena - if they are to repeat the feat...
The players did a brilliant job, I was really, really pleased with so much that they did. But we’re going to have to play better at home to give ourselves a chance.
We recognise the quality we’re playing against, but we’re just disappointed with another night of decisions not going particularly for us again.
They got their wing-backs much higher up than we did, because of the amount of possession they had and we didn’t.
In the main, we did a pretty good job, but not quite enough – and [the result] is what you get when get to this level.
If it was only that one, it wouldn’t be so bad, it’s the second one I’m more disappointed with.
We’re probably playing a Champions League team tonight.
We qualified for the competition by winning the Conference League, so there’s probably a gap in the quality, which showed tonight.
But we limited it for long periods, we did a good job of it, but we just need to find a way of getting back into the game.
I think Mo [Kudus] had a great chance early on and I think [the front players] all did a really good job, both defensively and trying to break when we could.
We weren’t good enough on the ball trying to build, to get us into better positions than we were, but I have to say their press was incredibly intense, incredibly fast, and the way they get the ball so quickly through the ball boys was something to see. It was something for us to learn.
I thought they yellow cards for Lucas Paquetá and Emerson were harsh.
I think if our bench all ran and surrounded [the officials] they way they did, the whole bench came off and you’re not allowed to do that…I thought it was a really poor action from their bench.
The support tonight was really good. They got behind us brilliantly well.
They probably appreciated that it was an incredibly tough game and we hung in. We’ve seen Leverkusen score a lot of late goals and I was really aware of that and was trying to find ways of tightening us up and shore it up.
But we lost two goals from corner kicks tonight, which for us is really disappointing.
