What did you make of the defeat to Everton?
We didn’t play well. I’ve got to say, I don’t think Everton played well either. It was a tight game. Did we deserve to win? No. Did we deserve to lose? Probably. Obviously they took a good opportunity and we had two or three pretty half decent ones in the end and we didn’t take any of them.
Has it been hard having a larger squad this summer and trying to bed all of your new players in?
No, I’ve not found that a problem at all. In fact, I’ve actually quite liked having the chance to look at it and change. If you look at it and concentrate more on the game, we’ve come here and won two games really narrowly in the last two seasons. I think we’ve won 2-1 and we scored in the last minute in one of the games, I think we won narrowly at the London Stadium as well so there was always a chance this game was going to be really nip and tuck and it was. I thought the game was really tight, I didn’t think there was really much in the game to be honest. I didn’t think we played well, I don’t want to talk about Everton but I don’t think we played well. We only got better really after they scored the goal. If you ask me, we were just ordinary and just doing enough to stay in the game.
Looking ahead, do you think you will look into playing Gianluca Scamacca and Michail Antonio together?
It’s a sort of question people will ask me when things aren’t looking so good. It’s a sort of question journalists ask, can you play the two of them? I’m sure that in time, I will look at it. At the moment, to play two strikers, you have to play three at the back. It’s very hard nowadays to necessarily go with a 4-4-2, so to play two strikers is mainly three at the back. We might consider and look at it if we think we’ve got the players. We’ve got [Nayef] Aguerd coming back, which will give us something different as well. We didn’t get a result today and I don’t think we deserved one in the end because I don’t think we deserved enough.
Playing in the Europa Conference League, does that present you a lot of problems with the fixtures and the travel?
I want to give you the truthful answer, which would be yes, but what I really want to say is that I want to be in Europe all of the time. I don’t want to give it up, so why would any club want to give it up? I’m certainly not going to use it as an excuse or a reason for results, but history will tell you that if you look at all of the teams who play Thursday/Sunday, it is a difficult fixture situation. We did quite well with it last year, especially in the opening parts and the group stages last year. We’ve found it a bit tougher today, that is for sure.
Did you take encouragement from the way your players responded after going 1-0 down?
I thought as if that was about the only period where we looked as if we were going to get anything xGs at all. I thought our attacking play in the first half, I don’t know how many wrong decisions we made, how many passes we gave away but I tell you what, it was as high as I’ve known it. I thought once we conceded the goal, our best passage of play was just after that and then we probably our better moments in the game then, but what we also did was opened up and gave Everton a little chance to counter attack us as well. I think in the main, the last 15 or 20 minutes, if anybody was going to get a goal, it was going to be us.
You felt your players’ levels have dropped in recent months. Why do you think that is?
I think if you actually look back, you would say we felt we had dropped down and we were aware of that, that’s why we tried to improve it. I recognised it probably February time that we weren’t quite as strong. We also chose in not to bring in anybody in January but I could see it. The truth was, we got to a European semi-final, we were challenging until the last 20 minutes of the season for sixth in the Premier League. We weren’t dropping away that far, we were challenging, but I could just sense we needed new players. A lot of them players I was talking about played today and I’ve got to say, I need them and I need them to play at their best. I think people have seen the performances a lot of the players can put in. I’m the one that takes the responsibility and I’ve got to get those players back that at level quickly, and hopefully, we will do that.
How frustrating was it that your players seemed to only pick up a level after going 1-0 down?
That was the bit that really annoyed me. It showed me that they had more to give but really, they stepped up a little bit after that. Obviously I understand Everton probably got the goal and probably felt that they needed to try and protect it. They made it look as if we were playing a bit better at that period, but I genuinely didn’t think there was an awful lot in the game. I didn’t think there was much between the two teams. We’ve won quite narrowly a couple of times here, today, we lost quite narrowly.
On a positive note, 12 of your 22 senior players that are fit will be on international duty this month. How pleasing is that in terms of recognition?
We are trying to keep up with the top six, whereas for long times we’ve been trying to stay out of the bottom six and signing players to do that. We’ve been signing players who we believe are going to be real top players, have already been recognised by their countries with a German international, Brazilian international, Italian internationals, so I am trying to get a level of player where I think we could compete against the top teams. We are certainly going to have to play better than we did today, that is for sure.
Has the international break come at a good time forWest Ham?
I don’t think you ever want to go on an international break off the back of a defeat. I think if I had won, I would’ve said: ‘yes, we’ll take our breaks where we can.’ I think all of the managers who win will be happy, but all the ones who don’t will be miserable for two weeks.
