David Moyes cut a frustrated figure after West Ham United were held to a 1-1 Premier League draw by Burnley on Sunday.
The Hammers created 22 goal attempts at London Stadium, with nine of them on target, only for a combination of wasteful finishing and fine goalkeeping from Clarets stopper Nick Pope denying the home side all three points.
West Ham were the better team early on, but a serious lower-leg injury suffered by Burnley midfielder Ashley Westwood stopped the game for nearly ten minutes and inadvertently slowed the hosts’ momentum. Shortly after the restart, Burnley centre-forward Wout Weghorst headed in after Jay Rodriguez had hit the crossbar form a corner.
And it could have got worse for Moyes’ men in first half added time when Maxwel Cornet won but then missed a penalty for the managerless visitors.
The second half was largely dominated by the Irons, who levelled through Tomáš Souček's bundled effort with 16 minutes to play, only for England international Pope to keep out two efforts from Michail Antonio and one from Issa Diop in the closing stages to leave the manager feeling like his team had missed a big opportunity to improve their position in the Premier League table and prospects of securing European qualification.
I think that was a game where we missed an opportunity. Today we had an opportunity to challenge the teams closer to the top and we’ve given that up today by the result.
But there were a lot of things in the game that altered it. We started the game quite well and there was a terrible injury to Ashley Westwood which obviously derailed the speed of the game for a while and we lost a wee bit of concentration during that period.
That’s our fault and nobody else’s fault, so that was it.
I think the players worked really hard to get the equaliser and were pushing really hard to get the second goal but we just lacked the word I use quite often – quality – and we just didn’t have it today.
We didn’t start the opening seven or eight minutes so well but then we got a bit of rhythm and I thought we were playing quite well and looked as if we were threatening them.
We had great opportunities and they made a great save from [Jarrod Bowen] from a corner kick, but I think the stoppages really affected us.
It was as if, once it stopped, we stopped when we needed to keep going. The minute we slowed down, we went back into maybe feeling a bit tired in ourselves but, in the end, we gave away a rotten goal, we really did.
When [Ashley Westwood] went down, [Nikola Vlašić] reacted straight away as if something was wrong and one or two players who had a look from a distance were obviously worried by it when they saw the sight of it and rightly so.
Everybody who has been a footballer, you care for the people who get bad injuries.
I can’t really complain [about the result] but we had gotten a bit of good rhythm, we were playing quite well, and we looked the more likely team to score when the injury happened.
Just after it, maybe it was a lack of concentration as we gave away a free-kick which led to a corner which led to the goal, but we had enough chances to win it and in the end we got back in the game and kept at it and probably should have won it.
But in the same breath, if they’d scored the penalty kick, maybe we would have lost it.
Their goalkeeper made a couple of great saves but, in truth, we should have killed the game off.
Even the couple near the end, we had great chances to seal it. Maybe you’d say we had a bit of ill-fortune, but we needed a win today and it’s disappointing we didn’t get it.
We need Michail Antonio’s goals because if you’re going to challenge and you want to be at the top, you need to take your opportunities when you make them. Today, we didn’t take our opportunities.
We had a great chance and we’ve not taken it. Today was a great opportunity for us and we’ve let that go.
I’m gutted with that and I’ve not got a great deal to say about it.
