David Moyes hailed a “brilliant defensive job” after his West Ham side shocked Arsenal, revealing he has taken inspiration from Diego Simeone’s criticism of Premier League backlines.
West Ham climbed into the top-six with a 2-0 victory at the Emirates, Moyes’ first away win at Arsenal in 23 attempts.
Goals from Tomas Soucek and Konstantinos Mavropanos proved the difference, but it was West Ham’s resilient defensive display that drew most praise, with Alphonse Areola keeping a clean sheet despite the Gunners managing a total of 30 shots.
“A brilliant defensive job,” said Moyes. “Terrific structure, organisation, discipline by the players. Obviously, Arsenal played incredibly well and put us under so much pressure, but we have to say that there’s a big part of football, which is defending.
"Sometimes people don’t want to talk too much about it but we did a really good job. Arsenal used to make a living out of it here, if you remember. Tonight, we did a really good job in stopping them.”
Last month, Atletico Madrid boss Simeone had claimed that the Premier League’s reputation for entertaining contests owed partly to the fact that “no one defends” and Moyes agreed that the art is increasingly under-appreciated.
“I thought we defended really, really well. I don’t know if you saw [Atletico Madrid manager] Diego Simeone’s comments about a month ago, talking about Premier League defending. He thought there were too many 4-3s and 5-4s. I thought it was right.
“Everybody wants the goals but there’s another part to football and it is to be really good defensively, be hard to beat. I think we showed that tonight.”
