David Moyes has been speaking to the media ahead of Thursday’s UEFA Europa Conference League play-off round second-leg tie in Denmark.
West Ham United head to Viborg FF with a 3-1 lead from the first leg at London Stadium, where Gianluca Scamacca, Jarrod Bowen and Michail Antonio were on target for the home side.
While there is still work to do at the Energi Viborg Arena, Moyes insisted his squad would be going all-out to reach the group stage of European competition for the second consecutive season as they seek to better last year’s run to the UEFA Europa League semi-finals.
The manager also talked about how well his players have done to put together back-to-back quality campaigns in challenging circumstances and how everyone at the Club wants to go again in 2022/23, with the additional demands of European football.
Moyes also praised the Board for the business they have sanctioned this summer, and talked about his desire to add more quality additions to his squad before the transfer window closes next week.
We’ve got to do everything we possibly can to qualify.
I think, when you’ve got play-off games, they are always difficult. I don't think there's any easy play-off games now – whether it is in the Champions League or whether it’s in the Europa League – there are no easy games in this competition. Everybody wants to get through and get into the group stages and that’s what we want to do.
We’ve only just started the season.
We’ve not started as well as we’d like but when we look back over the last season and what we did last year, with the games we played and getting to the Europa League semi-final, it’s been a tough year for us.
We’re a bit slower in starting than we’d like but I feel as if we are working towards it. I’m seeing signs of it improving and we’re talking plenty about it. It’s not as if we’re burying our heads in the sand and not talking about it, because we are.
Sometimes, when you make a big jump, the difference can be difficult to see.
I’ve told the story a few times now but, in my years at Everton, we’d quite often go through a good year and then a bad year, another good year and then a bad year, and I didn’t want that to happen at West Ham United. Last season it didn’t and we’ve had two really good seasons.
Of course, it’s always possible that it can happen. We need to be aware of it and we’re also in the middle of changing a lot about the squad. That could be a little bit to do with the position we’re in at the moment, but I think we are going about it the right way.
I think people can see the signs that we are making changes but, if you’ve been in the game long enough, making the changes can sometimes be the difficult bit and you have to try to get the form again. I think we’ve made great strides and we’ve got a great Club here. People are seeing us a top team now.
Mark Noble was the leader, but Declan Rice was a leader on the pitch.
Declan Rice was the leader on the pitch in terms of his performance and taking the team forward. Dec has been great at that, but the bit we’re just missing is we’ve got a little bit of a void at the minute with a lot of new players coming in, trying to integrate them and trying to keep the others in a good place as well, and Nobes is just missed a little bit for that. It’s a big job to ask.
It’s a different pressure here now.
The difference now at West Ham is we’re expected to win, we’re expected to win with a bit of style and people are used to us seeing quite a lot of goals. I think it comes with being a side that has got high expectations and that is something I do want as a manager, for us to have those expectations. That means we’ve done well enough to earn them.
Sometimes you can’t always reach them but I’m telling the players here that we’re reaching for the stars, we’re going to challenge, and we are going to be there at the end of the season.
We all want to be in Europe.
If you look what happened last year to the Club, our profile, how people saw our team and the media around it all, we’ve not had it at West Ham for a long time.
The thing we’re finding is it’s really difficult to play Thursday-Sunday. It’s not that we don’t want to be in these competitions but you’re just finding the Thursday-Sunday a bit of a drain. We want to get through, of course, but it will be a drain for any team.
Eintracht Frankfurt won the UEFA Europa League last season, but look at their league position (eleventh). You can look at Lyon and Sevilla too, and we finished seventh to get back in Europe again. We did an unbelievable job and we want to be in it.
I would never persuade people to join West Ham.
I want people here who want to come and want to be part of it. I don’t want to go out and persuade people – not at all! But I want them to come to a stadium where the support is right behind them and they are getting great backing. Because that can play a big part.
You just never know when people are watching. I want to attract top players to the Club, so we need the crowd to be right behind the team and with us all the way.
In terms of midfield, we want to get someone who we think can complement what we’ve got. I want somebody to add value to what we’ve got in terms of Declan and Tomas and the others. We’re trying to get what we think would level us up. We’ve tried to get really top players in.
I’ve got to say our owners have been brilliant on what we’ve had to spend. We’ve got in Gianluca Scamacca, an Italian centre-forward. We’ve brought in Nayef Aguerd, a centre-half who we really like who has unfortunately got injured. They’ve supported us all the way in terms of getting in the players and they still are now.
I won’t talk about Lucas Paqueta, but I will tell you we’ve bid for him.
He’s 23-years-old with 30 Brazil caps. He can play as a ten, an eight, and plays as a false nine for Brazil quite often. His pedigree is really good and you’d hope that would help to getting better.
