West Ham United manager David Moyes held his first pre-match press conference of the season at the London Stadium on Friday afternoon.
The Hammers' Scottish boss spoke at length with topics including faicng Manchester City, Erling Haaland, transfers, Maxwel Cornet and more.
Here is every word Moyes said to the media earlier today.
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How difficult will this clash against Manchester City be? Have you taken any notes from their Community Shield clash with Liverpool?
We’re playing Man City and it is incredibly tough. Of course, they are going to come here and have a hard game as well.
Are there any areas you will look to focus in on?
I think you consider all of the areas. You are against a top class side who have been for many years and we will see that once again this season as well.
Are you expecting the new signings to feature this weekend including Gianluca Scamacca?
Gianluca has only recently joined us so he's a bit behind. I'm not expecting him to be available this weekend. We've made some good signings in the summer but we've also had one or two injuries which doesn't help, we have to take that into consideration. In my mind we are far from finished. We have to do an awful lot more than what we've done at the moment and hopefully we'll be able to do that.
How close is the deal for Maxwel Cornet and would he be your last signing of the summer?
He’s in the building now so hopefully, we can get that concluded. I couldn’t tell you exactly until everything is done but he’s here at the moment. All I would say is no, we need to do an awful lot more business. We lost four players, three players and a goalkeeper at the end of the season. We were a couple of players short in January, we didn’t bring any players in in January, so we have to fill these voids and hopefully, we can do so. We want to bring in quality players, we don’t want to just fill it for the sake of filling it, so we are trying to do what we can.
What qualities will Maxwel Cornet bring to your squad and what else do you need to strengthen?
We’ve got lots of areas to address and the question on Maxwel is probably better suited once we get it all done, once we get it completed, then it will be a lot easier to speak about.
What are West Ham’s targets for the season?
I think we can be consistent again, we will try and do that. We’ve tried to become a side which can be competitive at the top end of the league, the last couple of seasons we have shown that but we have to make sure that we go again. We’re in a middle of a little bit of a rebuild, we’ve lost Mark Noble, we’ve lost one or two others so there’s a little bit of changing of the guard here. That will take a bit of time.
How pleased are you by the extension of the London Stadium capacity?
It’s fabulous for the football club because it’s showing that we feel as if we’ve got the need to have more seats to get more people in and that is normally because of the supporters enjoying their football and wanting to come along. I think it is really important that we encourage new and young supporters to West Ham and I think the club have gone out of their way to make sure that tickets are available to get new, young supporters here.
What is the latest team news?
We've got quite a lot of concerns but I'm certainly not going to give you them.
How is Angelo Ogbonna?
He's playing this afternoon for the U23s, he's played his first 90 minutes last week. He's doing really well but he's not ready yet to be considered for the first team. He's coming along nicely and maybe in three or four weeks he'll be much closer to that.
How well has Gianluca Scamacca acclimatised to the club so far?
He’s not had the chance to play, he’s not played any pre-season minutes. I’m hearing some questions coming in and I thought you would have done your homework and would have looked at that, he’s not played any minutes in pre-season. It’s probably going to be difficult to put him in the squad so soon. His training is a little bit behind at the moment than the other players. He has trained but maybe not as regular and as consistent [as the others]. The transfer took quite a bit off him in terms of games and training at the time. I’ve got him in, I like what I see, but we’re trying to get him in the best condition we can and get him ready to play.
How different of a match against Manchester City will it be now that they have Erling Haaland?
I don’t think it is ever going to change the way Pep [Guardiola] plays or how his team plays, I think what they have added is a prolific goalscorer, maybe the most up and coming young striker in the country, not just in this country but the world. He’s still to come to the Premier League and he’s still to play. Quite often, the overseas players take a bit of time to settle so I hope that is the case on Sunday.
This season is number what for you?
No idea.
How different does this season feel with the winter World Cup?
I think we’re still all recovering from the last two seasons which have been squashed in. Nothing’s given, we’ve not had any fewer games and for us especially at West Ham, it was a brilliant season because of all of the European games. We are still having a bit of a recovery and we are still piecing together that. The loss of one or two players means we're going to have to find new players and the start of a sort of rebuild of a team. We're in the process of that just now. I love being back, it’s great being back amongst it, but as I said, there's quite a big job going on here at the moment. We've got a bigger job than a lot of people think to get a side as competitive, competing as well as we have in the last couple of seasons.
Would you rather not being opening the season against the Premier League champions because of that?
I’ve got a thought, you’ve always got to play everybody twice, you’ve got to play them sometime in the season. Is there a good time or a bad time to play them, I’ve got no idea. As the season goes, you look at it and see a side who are in not as good form and it might be a good time to play them. Sometimes you play someone who have hit really good form so you can never tell. We play them twice, we’ve got them now. We only played them here a few weeks ago, or that’s what it feels like, hopefully, we can put in as good of a performance as we did in our last game.
You have tended to do well against bigger teams in recent times, are you hoping for the same this weekend?
It was one of the pluses last year that we performed much better against the Citys, the Liverpools, Chelseas over the season. It was probably the other batch of games, which the season before we had done better in. We had won all of the games we were at home to or expected to. I thought last year, we competed a bit more against some of the bigger sides and showed we could give them a game on our day. We need to play really against Manchester City to get a result because they are a really difficult side to beat. They’ve made the odd addition that could probably improve them as well.
Is the aim to qualify for Europe again and have a good run in the Europa Conference League?
Yes. I think if we continue to try to make West Ham a European club, that would have to be seen as incredibly good progress. I think once you make a big climb, which we have done, from being probably a relegation team to a side which is now challenging for the Champions League, certainly last year in talking about being in Europe, that is a big step, that is a big jump. We’ve done that in a short period. The next jump can never be as big, it can only be a small one because of the level of the teams above you and even consolidating. I can remember saying this time last year if we can get anywhere like the same position it would be excellent and we were. Up until the last game, up until half-time of the last game, we would have finished sixth again. We ended up finishing seventh, I didn’t see that as a bad return and we had a slightly better outcome in the cups, certainly in European football. We would have liked to have gone a bit further in both caps and we would like to do that this year as well.
What are the qualities that Gianluca Scamacca brings to your squad?
I think if you look around world football, there isn’t a giant bundle of forwards out there waiting to say ‘come on then,’ I’ll take one of these. I think there are some clubs that have already got some which are not within reach. There are a couple like Haaland for example, [Darwin] Nunez, so there wasn't a huge amount. I have to say, to be able to get Gianluca was something we have been watching for a long time. I see his link up play, his build up play is very impressive, I see him a young centre forward, 23 is young for someone to come into the Premier League. I’m looking and having to give him time, I hear other managers say you have to give these young players time as well. There are lots of things I like about him already. I think he’s given the team a lift and he will bring us a different dimension to say Michail Antonio, or maybe the two of them together at different times may give us an option as well. We are not going to push him too hard too quick, we want to bring him on and we want to get him right and bring him in when we feel as if he is ready to show his qualities.
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