David Moyes was down but not dispirited after seeing his West Ham United side defeated 2-1 by Olympiacos in UEFA Europa League Group A.
The Hammers were beaten in Greece, but remain top of their group ahead and will secure qualification for the knockout stages with wins over Olympiacos and German team Freiburg in their next two ties.
However, on Thursday, at a noisy and colourful Georgios Karaiskakis Stadium, the Irons were second best and saw their 17-match unbeaten run in European football brought to an end by determined opponents.
Olympiacos captain Kostas Fortounis and an own-goal from West Ham skipper Angelo Ogbonna did the damage in the 15 minutes before half-time and, despite sending on five substitutes after the break and seeing one of them, Lucas Paquetá, score a fine volley late on, Moyes’ side were ultimately unable to silence the passionate home crowd.
And so it was that, after successfully negotiating trips to Denmark, Belgium, Romania, Cyprus, the Netherlands, Czech Republic – for a UEFA Europa Conference League final win over Fiorentina in June – and Germany, West Ham’s record run for an English club was sunk in the port city of Piraeus.
The Hammers sit top of Group A at the midway point on six points, ahead of Freiburg on head-to-head record after winning 2-1 in Germany, two in front of Olympiacos and five clear of bottom side FK TSC of Serbia.
With home games against Olympiacos and FK TSC still to play, Moyes knows his team still have their destiny totally within their own hands as they seek post-Christmas European football for a third straight season.
Look, we changed a lot of players tonight, we’ve got the Premier League coming up and we’ve got a League Cup game next week and we’d won the first two games in the group, which gave us leeway to make changes tonight.
But maybe I have to recognise that while we didn’t win through the Conference League games easily, as they were all tough games, coming to Olympiacos after winning away in Freiburg, which was a good result, this wasn’t a good result and wasn’t a good performance.
In our heads we certainly had a bigger picture in our heads and that was going into Sunday.
I don’t think anybody could say the team we started with wasn’t a good team and wasn’t a team capable of winning or performing.
Many of them have been very good players for us over the years and still are.
If anybody wanted to see what supporters can do to make results then they should come and look at it here, because their crowd were really powerful here.
The crowd played a huge part tonight, they really did. We found it difficult late in the game as their players managed the game, but we got back in it.
We had to make changes to get back in it and we did do and we certainly looked more dangerous, but we never really looked as fluent with our mobility and how we played. We just didn’t seem to have that.
We were too deep for the second goal when their boy came in to shoot, and even for the first one with letting him have the shot.
The second one, we should have been higher up and blocking the shot ten yards higher up. The first one, I’m not sure if it’s gone through Dinos’s legs, but he gets a run and gets the shot away, the boy.
They hadn’t really created an awful lot and over the game I don’t think they created an awful lot, but we gave them big opportunities. We have to take that on the chin and move on.
We’ve had to do this for two years now, where we’ve had to consider what team to play on a Thursday night to have a team ready for a Sunday.
The recovery time, and it’s really difficult to explain if you’re not involved in it, is difficult. If you look at the teams who’ve been involved in it, it’s not easy.
If you change your team, it gives you more fresh players for the Sunday, that’s your hope, so let’s hope we’re fresh for Sunday.
