David Moyes is eager to return to winning ways on the European front when Olympiacos visit London Stadium on Thursday evening.
The Hammers, having set an English record for consecutive games unbeaten in European competition, saw the run come to an end in Piraeus two weeks ago against the Greek Super League side.
Despite the 2-1 defeat, Moyes’ Irons still sit top of Group A in the UEFA Europa League, on six points from three matches played, and victory on Thursday will put the Premier League in control of their own destiny on the continent.
While Moyes is wary of the threat Olympiacos will offer against his team, the manager is confident West Ham can claim the victory in front of a raucous home support in east London.
With the target of reaching the knockout stages of a European competition for a third consecutive season in his sights, the boss knows his team need to show an improved performance to get the right result on Thursday.
Team update
We’re still waiting a little bit on Kurt Zouma. He didn’t train on Wednesday morning but has done a little bit inside, so we’ll have a look at Kurt tomorrow and see how he is.
We don’t just play eleven players anymore. We’ve got a squad of players and you have to accept that’s part and parcel of football now. We have to change our squad in order to keep players fit and available, and we have an incredibly busy schedule.
We’ll continue to do that and it’s worked well for us in the last couple of years.
Correcting mistakes
We’re just off the English record of 17 games unbeaten in Europe and I would have certainly taken that a couple of years ago. I’m hopeful we can correct the defeat in our game on Thursday evening.
I’m looking for much better tomorrow night. We want to make sure we’re still in Europe after Christmas and I think, if we can win tomorrow night, we go a long way towards that for a third year in a row.
I think the whole team, in general, over the last couple of years have done a lot of good things. I’ve said before that we’re trying to make progress and play better, and as you go along, you try things and they don’t always work out. We have some players in really good form and we hope that continues.
Away game reflections
Olympiacos are a very experienced European team. I watched them play a couple of years ago against Arsenal and they’re a talented team. We’re up against a good team and I think our group this year is the toughest we’ve had in our three years in Europe. We’re going to have to play well.
We had difficult challenges out at Olympiacos. The crowd out there was phenomenal for them and played an enormous part. I also have to be honest and say we didn’t play well and were nowhere near our normal standards or levels.
I don’t think that defeat taught us anything we didn’t already know. They’ve got some really talented players and we knew what the atmosphere would be like too. We’re up against one of the better teams in Europe that we’ve played at home on Thursday, and I’ve got to say I think we’re going to have an incredible crowd at London Stadium for this group game. I think we’re going to show Olympiacos our home crowd in fine fettle.
European aims
We’ve got two home games left in Olympiacos and Freiburg, so I think we’re in a good place in the group. We’ve topped the group for the last couple of years in Europe and we need to perform on Thursday much better than we did in Olympiacos.
We want to be in the Europa League in the New Year. We want to win in the group and get through to the knockout rounds. Of course, if we finish third in the group, we’d go back into the UEFA Europa Conference League and we did brilliantly in that last season. But we want to do well in the Europa League, and we’re top of the group right now and we’re in a really good position. The intention is to stay top of the group.
A balancing act
I think, as a manager, you want to be a really good league team. Being a good league team means you’ve shown consistency all the way throughout the year, but we all know to be successful in the league is really difficult. Having success in the cups is so important too.
Last year, I have to say, I needed the cup games, because our league games weren’t good enough last year. Our cup games kept us going and, by the end, we won the trophy and had the best season in a long time. We still want to do well in the league but we have to prove that again.
Brilliant Bowen
Jarrod Bowen is happy to play in any position we put him in. We’ve moved players around before, like Michail Antonio and Marko Arnautović, and it’s always in my mind that Jarrod can play there. In his early days, he had played some games for Hull City as a centre-forward too.
He’s done really well whatever role he has played for us, and he got another goal at the weekend. He’s kept his goals ticking along and we’ve needed that.
