#PLStories- David Moyes on Anderlecht clash, Declan Rice, Maxwel Cornet and Flynn Downes #WHUFC
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David Moyes
Has anyone in the squad not travelled?
Maxwel Cornet hasn’t travelled. He’s got a little bit of a calf strain. We don’t know how long it will keep him out at the moment, but we don’t think it’s too severe.
Seeing Declan Rice mature in recent years, do you almost feel like a proud dad?
He’s a great ambassador for himself and West Ham. He speaks so well for someone so young. Part of being a leader is doing that, trying to stand up and show what your worth is. But I do think he learns an awful lot when he goes away with England. England have got a fantastic manager and some really top players. It gives him a chance to see how the top people work and manoeuvre. I think now, a lot of people are looking at Dec as one of the main boys for England. He’s arguably, after Harry Kane, England’s most important player nowadays. It shows you how far and how well he’s done in a short period.
Relived to win against Wolves?
Extremely relieved. Look what happened to the manager at Wolves, which was really unfortunate, and there was very little between our positions in the league. I’m not saying there’s no difference between my position at West Ham and his at Wolves, but certainly, our league positions weren’t much different. But I think that’s what we’re seeing in football at the moment. An awful lot of changes. I don’t know what goes on behind closed doors at other clubs. But at our club, I’ve had great support from the owners and everybody behind it. We think we’re trying to build something. Trying to make West Ham a consistent team in the Premier League. That isn’t an easy thing to do, but we’re trying to make a good fist of it.
How important is this double header with Anderlecht?
I wouldn’t in any way disrespect Anderlecht at all. We’re away from home in Europe. It’s an incredibly difficult thing to do to come away and get results. Anderlecht are a proud club. They’ll see the chance of beating us and getting ahead of us in the group. But we’re going to play each other twice very quickly, and at the moment, both us and Anderlecht look like the team with the most points. That could change. But [this week] is important. We’d like to win the group if we could. But, as I said last year, if we qualify and we’ve got European football after Christmas, that will be a real bonus for us once again.
At the weekend, you dropped Vladimir Coufal, Pablo Fornals and Michail Antonio. Is that a message that you have plenty of competition in the squad?
We wanted a stronger group of players so we could come to Europe and play a strong team. We made a good go of it last year in the group stages, but we ran out of steam a little bit — not so much in the European games, but when we came back to the Premier League games. So I have to find a way of trying to manage [the squad] a little bit better. We’ve had a couple of players injured for a while, but we’ve just about got all the players back fit now. That gives me options to change, competition. And on Saturday, I felt we had to do better — and I think it was better.
Jan Vertonghen said that clubs prioritise the Premier League and Champions League, but not the Europa League and Europa Conference League. Do you agree with that?
Doing well in the Premier League is always really important. But doing well in the Premier League gets you in Europe. For West Ham to be in Europe two years in a row is fantastic. We’re really enjoying it. We had a brilliant run last year. The focus will always be on being a sound, competitive Premier League team. But if you have a squad strong and capable enough of dealing with all the cup competitions, I’m going to do that.
Do people at the club still chat about the 1976 European Cup Winners’ Cup final? The last time Anderlecht faced West Ham United.
People at the club have been talking about it. Anderlecht were always one of the big European teams. I’m really looking forward to it. Belgium as a nation are doing really well under Roberto Martinez and have top players all over Europe now.
Regan Clayton trained with you this morning. Is he part of the travelling squad?
We’ve brought Ollie Scarleswith us, who’s 16. Anderlecht have got a couple of 16-year-olds, so it’s a great thing that young players can have opportunities, and some of them will play. We used it a lot last year. We’ve got a new group of under-23s, and we’re trying to promote the younger ones even sooner and quicker if we think they’re doing well.
How much does training with the first-team and trips with them help develop a young player?
I had some experiences with Celtic when I was younger and had some great experiences when I was young. I think it is really important to try and bring on your younger players. That’s why clubs like Anderlecht, for example, we’ve maybe not got the same financial clout, they have to produce their own players and bring young players into the team, and it’s great. We really do want to do that at West Ham, but getting to the standard of being a Premier League player now is a really difficult thing, and the journey to get there can be very difficult. Quite often, a lot of the players are maybe from Belgium or Germany or France and get the games in their countries before getting to the Premier League. If we can get some through from our academy, it would be huge for the club. I think even Declan and you look at Ben Johnson, boys have been through it at the moment. I think it’s really important for your club.
Do you feel for Maxwel Cornet that he gets injured on the day he makes his full Premier League debut for the club?
It was difficult because we want Maxi, we want to try and get him up to speed and again, he was another boy who had no pre-season games, didn’t do an awful lot in pre-season, so we’re trying to edge him towards it, and he’s actually had a contribution in quite a few of the games at the moment. These are the sorts of games where there’s a chance you can give these boys an opening and a great opportunity to play, show what they can do, but we’ve not got Maxi.
When do you think it is too many games for a player such as Declan Rice?
If you are talking about a bigger all-round question, probably not the one you just mentioned, in football, there are so many games. Actually, I was asking the question to one of the staff on the bus coming here, have all of the other European leagues got as many games from the international break until the start of the World Cup? For example, Belgium, Germany, France, or whatever leagues, have they all got a similar amount of games to what the Premier League have got, or is it different? We know that we’re on a really, really difficult schedule. That is why the good thing is, we do have a bit of a squad, we can look to change, we can make changes because I feel as if we’ve got good competition now. Gianluca Scamacca has shown that with Michail Antonio, we’ve got good competition in centre-forward areas and as long as we stay away from injuries, which Declan sort of referred to there, we should be okay.
Do you think it is sustainable for a player to play so many games each year?
It’s not sustainable, and actually, it is something I hope the people who run the authorities in football are going to look into because we might be back on the pandemic, we might be back on the first year with World Cup in the middle of it, so there could have been a lot of things come together which have actually made this a lot worse than what we would expect it to be. That’s what I’m hoping it is. I hope that once we get over the World Cup in this period, the levelling out for football players is a bit better. Even for their own life, it is a great life being a football player, it really is, and they are fortunate in a lot of things they do, but they also need some time to sit with their families. Declan has a young baby and probably had very little time to be with his new baby. There are lots of things like that, which, as you all know, can make it difficult.
What have you done to adapt to the number of games West Ham have had already this season? Extra days off or different training?
A bit of all of that. I think last year it was a little bit of the opposite. Last year, we didn’t give them much time off. We sort of kept it going. We had great momentum last season, which we had built up from the year before and the momentum and I wanted to keep the momentum going. Obviously, this year, we’ve not started as well, so I’ve had to actually go slightly in the opposite way, and I’ve tried to give them a little bit more time off, to try and see, in case it was too much. I talk to you boys quite a lot about where I’m going, I’ve got an idea, and I’m trying to find a way to get that momentum back up, giving them a little bit more time off because of the amount of games, trying to make sure that the players who have been here before, they get back to their levels, which I’ve talked about a couple of weeks ago and I sense there is an incredible team spirit with all of the players, there really is, through the club we’ve got a real spirit, and I feel that is a real strength, a real positive which they’ve got. They are really because they got a good win and a really important win at the weekend, and we want to build on it. I’ve told them, I want to try and get the momentum going again. We want to go into this batch of games where we feel as if we can go and win with three or four on the bounce if we can.
Has Flynn Downes not featured much this season because he is still adapting?
If you ask me where he had been to what I am seeing now, and I look at some other players, I’ve looked at maybe like Kalvin Phillips who went to Man City and maybe not really adapted or been injured, and I don’t know. I think it will always happen. I’m talking about someone from the Championship, Flynn Downes. He needs time, and it’s different when you might say, ‘what about Jarrod Bowen?’ I am saying this because Jarrod Bowen joined us when we were probably a team trying to avoid the bottom three, and Flynn Downes is now joining a team trying to be in the top half of the league, so we’ve changed from that point of view. He will need to wait for his opportunities. What I would say is that he has trained much better in the last two to three weeks, and we are certainly seeing a bit more from Flynn from when he first came in. Maybe he’s recognising, ‘he, I’ve got to step up as well, and I am going to have to move up’ to join these boys.
Do you feel Anderlecht can use the Europa Conference League to turn around their poor league form?
I do. I think that being good in any cup competition I think is good for the supporters, the people at the club, the team, I think they’ve done well. They’ve not conceded a goal here if I’m right in the competition. That itself says they are a hard team to beat. I also think that the team also gets a positive when they are playing against a Premier League team. It’s a big game, and it gives them a little bit more energy you sometimes have in England with some of the teams. We go out, we have to try and play well, we know that we are still trying to build our team again, we are still trying to improve. We’ve got a lot of things we need to do much better, and I am sure Anderlecht are probably saying the same about their team also.
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