David Moyes was understandably in a good mood when he met the media at Rush Green training ground on Friday.
The manager was a little over 12 hours removed from leading West Ham United to a year-ending 2-0 Premier League win at Arsenal – his first victory at Emirates Stadium as a manager, West Ham’s third Premier League win in a row and tenth in 14 matches in all competitions and one which ensured Moyes’ team ended 2023 in sixth place.
Reflecting on a year that brought 32 wins, 97 goals and a UEFA Europa Conference League title, and four years since he returned to the Club for a second spell in charge on 29 December 2019, the Scot was rightly proud of his achievements.
At the same time, he is looking forward to the future with optimism that the good times can continue in east London…
A happy fourth anniversary
I'm really happy in the environment I'm working in here.
I enjoy working for the people around the Club, all the people here are really supportive and helpful, I've got a great team of players we have built over the four years and come from quite a low level to a decent point at the moment and if we can keep it going that would be great.
I'm sure other part, the contract, will get sorted in due course. In due course we'll find how things go.
West Ham have given me the chance to attain some of my ambitions – to win a trophy, to challenge the top teams if I can. In both of them West Ham have allowed me to do that and I’ve got a big thank you to them for bringing me back on a second occasion.
Hopefully they would see it’s been mutual and it’s worked out for them as well.
A successful but not surprising 2023
Maybe I’d have expected this is where we’d be come the end of 2023. Maybe.
That's what I'm pushing to do and what my job is, to try and push hard. I couldn't turn around and say it was guaranteed but we keep throwing a few punches and getting a few results and if we can keep that going...
Let’s be fair, we didn’t do it last year, but in the two seasons before we finished sixth and seventh, so maybe we shouldn't be surprised to see us up there challenging to try and be around those positions again.
Eddy’s adaptability
The bigger thing for him is his adaptation to the Premier League and its intensity and the consistency that all the teams in the Premier League teams show in terms of performances.
There have been games where Eddy has been so, so good like he was against Arsenal and there have been others where games where he might have expected them to be a bit easier, but the Premier League gives you no easy games.
But, as a new player coming into the Premier League it takes a long time to settle and he’s settled in really quickly, done a brilliant job for for us, he's done a lot of good things in the game and played really well against Arsenal.
High-flying Seagulls
Let’s be fair, Brighton have always been a big hoodoo club for us. We broke it at the start of the season, but over the years it’s been an incredibly difficult game for us against Brighton, for whatever reason I don’t really know.
It won’t be any easier [this time around] because they've got a really good team and really good manager and, like us, they're in the last 16 of Europe and in a really strong league position so it's going to be a very tight game and we know we’re up against it.
Anticipating action in the January window
We're always looking to try and bring players in and add to the squad and push to get better.
I think we might be looking to lose one or two players before we bring anybody else in and a lot will depend on players going to the African Nations and depend on injuries as well, which we have done very well with this season so far but just in the last day or two picked up a couple of small injuries.
A message to the Claret and Blue Army
We should all look back on 2023 with fond memories. Hopefully many of the fans were in Prague with us or on the streets when we brought the trophy back to London.
Our aim is to build on that again and make sure 2024 is as strong.
For me, I want everyone to be right behind the team. We’ve got some incredibly exciting players at the Club and we want to attract more top players to West Ham in the future and they want to see an atmosphere and the supporters right behind the team, willing them on, because that’s the way we’ll be attractive to more top players.
