Every word David Moyes said on West Ham's Crystal…

Every word David Moyes said on West Ham's Crystal Palace loss, VAR and Kurt Zouma's injury

West Ham United manager David Moyes spoke to the media at length on Saturday afternoon following the Hammers' 4-3 defeat to Crystal Palace.

The seven-goal thriller saw West Ham suffer back-to-back losses for the first time since before the international break, with West Ham just five points clear of the relegation zone.

Here is every word Moyes said on the defeat, VAR, an injury to Kurt Zouma and more.

What do you make of the penalty decision against Nayef Aguerd for the incident with Eberechi Eze?

Well maybe, the words I said in midweek were correct. The thing they really pride themselves on is not giving away soft penalty kicks in the Premier League this year and today, I think today would go down as a very soft penalty kick.

Do you think the referee should have had another look at?

I don’t really know what they do. I don’t know what VAR’s situation is, I don’t know when they do come in and when they don’t come in, I’m not sure.

How frustrating was that for you to watch?

I’m more frustrated with the way we played for the whole game. I didn’t think we played, I thought Crystal Palace showed more quality than we did, played better. If I said something that I pride myself on, it’s that my teams are normally hard to beat and have been hard to play against over the years. Today, we weren’t hard to beat and we weren’t hard to play against. That’s probably the most gruelling bit for me. Look, we scored goals from set-pieces today, which in truth, we haven’t really been scoring that many from set-pieces this season. We got a couple today which certainly helped.

How is Kurt Zouma?

It looked like he’s gone over on his ankle, his ankle has swollen up at the moment. We will get him checked in the morning tomorrow with a scan.

How big of a challenge is the next week against Manchester City and Manchester United?

I don’t think anybody in any way should underestimate how well Crystal Palace are doing at the moment and how well they are playing. I think they’ve got some really talented players at the moment and they are playing well. We’ve come here and not played well, but ran them as close as we could. I couldn’t absolutely turn around and say we deserved anything from it, but we nearly got something in the end. Two huge decisions have gone against us this week, which could have maybe avoided us losing the points. Fine lines at the moment from getting something from the games.

Do you feel fatigue played a part given your recent schedule?

I don’t want to use it as an excuse, but I think if you wanted to say could it be a reason, even Palace getting Tuesday and us getting Wednesday. If you win, you don’t say anything about it. If you lose, you do. That’s the way it is. Our fixture list has been pretty busy and it probably didn’t help us. Even the delay at the start of the game I don’t think overly helped us either.

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