West Ham United manager David Moyes has called on his side to use the positivity from Thursday night’s performance against Bayer Leverkusen as fuel for the remainder of the Premier League campaign.
The Irons might have exited the UEFA Europa League at the quarter-final stage to the newly-crowned Bundesliga champions, but they gave Xabi Alonso’s undefeated side a real scare with an energetic display at London Stadium.
Now, with five league games to go in 2023/24 – and a trip south of the Thames to Crystal Palace first up on Sunday – the boss is targeting a fruitful end to the programme.
The carrot of a fourth successive year of European football is still there for the Hammers, and although Moyes knows the fixture list contains tough assignments, he is sure his team can deliver once again.
High praise for a team effort
The praise goes to the players for how well they performed last night.
The first-half performance was terrific. I have to say I thought our performance away from home was very, very good as well. I’m only repeating myself from what I said last night, that the players over the two legs did a brilliant job against an incredibly good side.
But unfortunately we went out, sometimes in the cup competitions you need the draws to be favourable for you and our draw against Leverkusen was one of the toughest we thought we could get in the quarter-finals.
Over the three years, the three quarter-finals we’ve had, that has been the toughest game and the only one we’ve gone out on in the three years.
Aiming for Europe again
We’ve love to do it again and be back in Europe next season.
You have to remember last year we did it by winning a trophy, it wasn’t by our league position. This year our league position has improved greatly. We’ve been challenging, around the top seven or eight all season.
Obviously we know the level of the games we’ve got, we know the level of the opponents, who are challenging as well for those European positions.
It’ll be tough, it’s another year when we’ve played ten or 12 games more than most other teams as well, but we’ve enjoyed it and if we could get back to Europe again it would be great.
One more Thursday-Sunday assignment
I’ve said many times it’s a difficult programme when you’re in the Europa or Europa Conference League.
But we’ve now done it for three years and had nearly 40 games on Thursday-Sundays, so we have to get ready for one more Sunday game after a Thursday encounter.
Palace are always a tricky opponent
I think going to Palace is always a difficult encounter. I think all the managers would say it’s never an easy place to go and get a result. They’ve got a terrific support and it’s another tough game.
I think they’ve proved tricky opposition because they’ve got good players. They have some really talented individuals.
The Premier League every week is the same. You can talk big about what the opposition are because the level in the Premier League is so high.
A familiar face in the opposition dugout
We came up against [Eagles boss] Oliver Glasner when he was the Eintracht Frankfurt manager so I’m well aware of him.
It’s good to see he’s come over to the Premier League as he is a very good manager. They had a brilliant win away at Liverpool last week, which is very difficult to do, but I think Liverpool had a game on the Thursday night before as well, which can have some effect on it.
We need to go there and we need to win. We want to try and win all our games.
George Earthy is recovering well
He’s [doing] great. He was in watching training the other day and he looks fine but obviously we’re following all the protocols required. He is not in contention this weekend with the head injury protocol.
