David Moyes could not hide his disappointment following West Ham United’s 1-1 Emirates FA Cup third-round draw with Bristol City on Sunday.
The Hammers made the perfect start at London Stadium when Jarrod Bowen scored inside four minutes, but that was as good as it got for Moyes and his team.
Lucas Paquetá was forced off with a knee injury, Pablo Fornals missed a big opportunity to double West Ham’s lead, Dinos Mavropanos was hurt in a challenge by Bristol City’s Tommy Conway, who then scored the Robins’ equaliser on the hour-mark, before Bowen himself suffered a leg injury in added-time at the end of the game.
With all that to deal with, and an unwanted replay at Ashton Gate to plan for, Moyes was clearly not a happy manager when he spoke to West Ham TV after Sunday’s tie…
We’ve got a replay and we’ll go to Bristol in a week or so’s time.
Look, we should have been two-nil up. Pablo Fornals had a great chance to make it two-nil and I think we actually had one after that as well. I'm not saying that would have wrapped it all up, but it would have made it a lot easier.
We started the game really well in the first ten or 15 minutes and I think the injury to Lucas Paquetá and him going off was something which probably affected the all-round levels after that.
We didn’t perform anywhere close to where I would have liked and I was hugely disappointed with our performance levels.
It was a great pass from Lucas and we know what Jarrod can do in those positions.
It looked at that time like we might go on and get full control of the game, but we didn’t really do that. We didn’t grab it and we let Bristol City grow into the game and we didn’t handle that very well.
Whatever we did wasn’t good enough, I know that.
The injuries happened and it’s football and you have to live with it when it happens.
You will pick up injuries and you have to deal with it. We’ve been quite fortunate this season as we’ve not picked up too many, but today we just felt as if we had one or two injuries.
Vladimír [Coufal] was also stunned by a couple of challenges, but we'll check them and hopefully they'll be OK.
We had a few knocks and bruises, but that's what happens this time of year.
It will be a really hard game at Ashton Gate.
When you’re the smaller club and you get a replay and a big side back it’s always a big night.
It’ll be a tough night for us, but they’ll be the same and they know they’ll be in for a game as well and hopefully we can get through.
We gave them a good game for most of the game, but we missed a chance or two right at the end as well but, let’s be fair, Bristol City certainly deserved their draw.
We've now got a replay at Ashton Gate and I've not been back there in a while, so I'm really looking forward to going back. I'd rather not be going back for a replay, but I'm still looking forward to it nevertheless.
Lots of games go this way and ours did today.
