West Ham United boss David Moyes spoke to the media at length on Friday afternoon ahead of Monday night's clash with Bournemouth at the London Stadium.
West Ham go into the game in good form this month, although they did see their five-match unbeaten streak come to an end on Wednesday night, losing 1-0 to Liverpool.
Here is every word Moyes said on facing the Cherries, their interim manager Gary O'Neil, Steven Gerrard being sacked by Aston Villa, Jarrod Bowen, and more.
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Your first game back in your second spell at the club was a 4-0 win over Bournemouth. How do you reflect on what the club have achieved since then?
Well at that time when we came in, every point was always going to be really crucial and it was a great start for us and probably a big boost. The players need it as well, but I’ve got to say, what the players have gone on to do in the last two and a half/three years has been remarkable. From that group of players being near relegation to a group of players which has been challenging towards the Champions League for the last couple of years says an awful lot about them, how they’ve changed, their character, how hard they’ve worked, their resilience. We used to want to get away from that word ‘flakey’ with West Ham and I think for most of the last two and a half years, we have done.
Despite the defeat to Liverpool, do you still feel you have got the momentum from your form this month?
I thought we played well, even in the periods we didn’t play so well and I’ve had a chance to look at it. Liverpool are a good team as well, so you can’t be expected to completely dominate a team like Liverpool or play better than them all of the time. I thought we gave Liverpool a good game and our players put on a decent show.
What is the latest with Lucas Paqueta’s shoulder injury?
Just at the moment, we don’t think it’s maybe as serious as we maybe had feared at first. I know the injury is an injury that is not normal for football players, so from that point of view we have to treat it slightly differently. Hopefully, we will get him back shortly.
Are Craig Dawson and Maxwel Cornet in contention to return?
Hopefully, both of them have a chance. Maxi is back on the grass, it might come a bit too quick [for Cornet].
What do you make of the club receiving an FA charge for failing to control their players after Romain Perraud’s goal for Southampton on Sunday?
That makes me laugh really when I think about it. I think the real reason is the confusion about it. The first part really is I don’t think everybody is quite aware of the rule that you can now put your foot over the line and it’s okay to put your foot over the line on a throw-in. I actually think that the reason why is the general public, you’ve seen the reaction from the supporters who were in line with it. I think it’s very badly put out by the people who should put it out. Then, the next part is the referee gets in the way of Jarrod Bowen, which the players find not right. The referee does it without any sort of compassion in any way to see the player couldn’t get to the ball and he impacted on it. The players put themselves in a position where they were all querying the two decisions because they didn’t know the one about the foot over the line. The referee didn’t get out of the way and he should have gotten out of the way, that’s what it was and he didn’t do it. Unfortunately for the referee, it led directly to a goal, and unfortunately for us, it did as well because he was in the wrong position.
Will you be planning to appeal the decision?
I just see it as players being needed to know exactly what is expected. The referee was in the wrong position, so that was probably the first one and the second was to say he was putting the foot over the line as well.
What have you made of Gary O’Neil’s time in charge of Bournemouth as their interim boss?
He's done very well, a good job. I’ve got to say Scott Parker did a brilliant job at Bournemouth as well getting them up and getting them in the Premier League is a great achievement. Gary has picked it up and taken it on a little bit as well. He’s done very well, it’s not easy to go on these runs in the Premier League, especially being a new club. They've had a really good start to the season.
Has Jarrod Bowen come back okay from missing a penalty on Wednesday night?
Yes. We’re all disappointed because it gave us a big opportunity. These things in football happen don’t they? What they do is they make you stronger, you find a way of getting better.
What was your reaction to Steven Gerrard being sacked by Aston Villa?
I’m really disappointed for Steven Gerrard himself because we want to get young, new managers in and around the league. We have seen it with Steven Gerrard, we’ve seen it with Frank Lampard for example. We’ve got some other managers who have come into it. That’s disappointing for me, but Steven will be fine because he was an incredible player, I don’t need to say that. He’s also shown that he’s a very good manager as well and I've got no doubt that he will go on to manage again, and go on to be a success elsewhere. Sometimes in this business, it just doesn’t fit or it might not be the right time or things just don't quite work out for you. I’ve got no doubt he’ll go on to be a future very good manager.
How do you make your side more ruthless in front of goal?
I can’t do an awful lot between now and Monday but all we can do is make them more aware that we are thinking we are missing too many opportunities. We need to get a better goal tally than we are getting at the moment, we need more goals from every area of the pitch. Over the last few years, we've spread the goals around quite a bit and we went a long time last year where our forward players didn’t score many goals, but our centre halves and midfielder players were coming up with the goals. We've got to hope we can do that again this season and get the goals all around the team.
Starting from Bournemouth, you have three games in six days and five in 13 days. How do you strike the balance of keeping players fit, tactical work, and putting out strong teams?
You probably answered that, there's very little time to do that. We try to give the players recovery time from the games and getting them ready, preparation time. If you look at our best season a couple of years ago, we had Saturday to Saturday games most of the time, times to prep the team, try to get prepared correctly for every game and it gave us a bit of a chance to do so. We made a pretty good go at it last year and I’m sure we will make a pretty good go of it this year as well, but it’s a difficult schedule for everybody.
When picking teams, can you pick it game by game or do you have to think more long-term?
We've got seven games to go, eight before we played Liverpool. We need to think about how we use the players well enough and who we think is ready for the job. You always want to try and play who you may think is your best team but quite often, in situations like this, you have to keep slightly chopping and changing now and again to keep things fresher.
How do you think Bournemouth will compare to Wednesday’s trip to Liverpool?
I think every game you play in the Premier League, no matter who you play, is the same level of difficulty, you try and do the same preparations for whoever you play, no matter if it was Liverpool or Bournemouth or anybody else, we’d do the same. We’ll go into the game knowing it’s a really important home game for us, our form at home has been pretty good and we want to try and keep that going.
There are only two points between you and Bournemouth and five between the top ten and the bottom three, are you surprised at how tight the table looks right now?
No, I’m not surprised because I’ve said I don’t think there’s much between the teams. I think the teams at the bottom, you are seeing some very good signs in and around the bottom and that can easily change and maybe don’t deserve to be at the bottom or won’t be at the bottom, so it could change. The tightness is not a surprise, obviously, we know there are three or four very good teams and very exceptional teams, but I don’t think there’s very much after that.
How close do you think the team is to being back at its best?
I think we were impressive in midweek. I think we are back to our levels, I think we are close to showing exactly what we can do. You will always be looking for things that can get better. If our finishing was better then we probably would’ve got a really positive result at Liverpool.
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