David Moyes gave a considered reaction after seeing his West Ham United team go down to a harsh 3-0 defeat at Manchester United on Sunday.
It was another difficult Premier League visit to Old Trafford, where West Ham have now not won in the top-flight in 16 visits dating back to May 2007, but one in which Moyes felt his team played better than they had in recent draws with Sheffield United and AFC Bournemouth.
On this occasion, the Hammers were unfortunate to go in behind at half-time, having created three times as many goal attempts as their hosts, but it was Denmark striker Rasmus Højlund who scored the only goal of the opening 45 minutes with an accurate finish, while the visitors either missed the target or were denied by goalkeeper André Onana.
It was a theme that would continue in the second half as the Irons continued to get into good positions and then not make the most of them.
The game was summed up in one 60-second spell four minutes after the interval. Emerson raced through on goal, only to scoop his shot over the crossbar. Manchester United attacked, Edson Álvarez slipped, Alejandro Garnacho took possession and saw his shot deflect off Nayef Aguerd and past goalkeeper Łukasz Fabiański.
And defeat at Old Trafford was confirmed six minutes from the end when Argentina international Garnacho collected on the edge of the penalty area and shot low into the corner.
For Moyes, it was an afternoon of huge frustration as his team created 22 goal attempts, but just three of them tested Onana, but also one where he could see signs of returning to the form his players showed before Christmas.
Right from the start, I was wondering if we were going to get anything on target.
Let’s be fair, it’s not just today, it’s been in recent games as well. We’ve not scored as many goals recently. We only got one against Bristol City, two against Sheffield United and one against AFC Bournemouth, but today I felt we made better opportunities.
I thought we played better today, and we got some chances, but we just weren’t clinical when we got the moments.
I thought we played well.
I was really disappointed with the performances against Sheffield United and Bournemouth because I didn’t think we played well. I’m the manager and I’ll take responsibility for that, but we just haven’t played so well.
We haven’t got into our rhythm, mainly because of some of our boys being away at the Africa Cup of Nations and because of two or three injuries. If we look at our form up until around the first of January, we’ve been very good. But we’ve got knocked off by those things and we just can’t get the balance to our team right on the left-hand side.
We played Ben Johnson on the right today, and Mohammed Kudus on the left, and I thought Ben did a brilliant job.
He’s turning into a little bit of a hybrid player for us; one who can do different roles. It might not be the solution to the problem long-term, but I have to give him credit for how he played. He did as well as we hoped he would.
We were wary of Marcus Rashford and his ability to get forward, and Luke Shaw at left-back, but I thought Ben did a really good job for us. In the main, most of the players did a good job.
We’re disappointed about the first goal because we hadn’t really given Manchester United anything.
They were not near our box for most of the time but then we find ourselves giving a goal away because we don’t defend the edge of our box well enough, and the lad gets his shot away.
The game changed in a minute.
Emerson was through, and maybe Jarrod [Bowen] should keep his run going and give him a square-pass option for the tap-in, or maybe it would effect [Lisandro] Martinez, who did a good job in defending and forcing Emerson to keep on the ball. And then, before you know it, you’ve lost the ball and conceded a goal because of a deflection. When that happens, you know it’s not going to be our day.
But we made some chances too. Jarrod got through and [Diego] Dalot did brilliant to make his recovery run and make the tackle. So, there have been moments in this game where we could have got some goals, but we’re not quite taking those chances in the way we have done.
We have reasons to be optimistic.
We have to try and get back into the form we were in prior to the start of the new year. We played really well in December and won some really big games, and now we have to do it again.
The Premier League will always have ups and downs. Hopefully, with our performance today, we’ll get a bit closer to our usual form. But we’re disappointed we didn’t take anything from the game.
We took a precaution with Alphonse Areola [when we subbed him off at half-time].
We just thought that we didn’t need to take the risk, we didn’t need to take any chance. Hopefully he’ll be okay.
