#PLStories – #DavidMoyes believes West Ham have improved after opening day loss against Newcastle United #NUFC #WHUFC
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David Moyes
Your assessment of that performance, David?
A strange one, really. I think we can play much better but I am really pleased with the point. Remember, Man City have come here twice recently and scored four and five so we did some good things, probably more so in the first half when we played well. Second half was a bit more difficult but I have to say, the brilliant character from the players. They showed it last Sunday and they did today in a different way to hang on and keep something.
How is Michail Antonio?
We don’t know, we will have a check and scanned. He came off against Spurs with something similar. He just felt something. He didn’t miss training so we hope it’s not much. He is so important to us, we have to be really careful. He couldn’t decide if he was cramping up or not. We will get him scanned over the next day or two and see how he is.
Delighted with how the team has come through the nightmare fixtures?
After our Newcastle performance I was absolutely stunned, I hadn’t seen that coming in pre-season, games or the players, I had seen what I am seeing now. I’d like to put that as a one-off that day. Now is more like what we expect to play like. Two wins and two draws against teams who are hard to take points against. They are credible, worthy, we played better against Spurs than today but we were hard to beat and to score against today which against tcity and what they are capable of is good for us
How do you keep the momentum going?
The big thing is we have a squad of players, others waiting to come in, we have brought players in so the competition is tough now. If you want to stay in the team then you need to keep performing. We have got a really good group and team spirit and it is showing in our performances I do also and we are improving as a team, our football is getting better. From that point of view I am really pleased with how things have been going.
Lots of muscle and fatigue injuries, a factor coming into play?
City are slightly different as they were in the Champions League whereas we were having some sort of holiday time if you can call it that, we were able to have a mini pre-season. I do think the injuries and amount of games getting crammed in, with international games just over a week ago,, three more coming up and club games it is going to take its toll somewhere along the line. If you playin the Championship it becomes Saturday/Tuesday and you become a bit immune to it as you’re used to it but with the Premier League, there are liable to be injuries if we aren’t careful.
Confidence from this unbeaten run?
When everybody saw the fixtures we thought it would be tough but because the players have played so well, their attitude and determination, they have all trained well, there are lots of things that have given me hope. I went into today thinking we had a real good chance to get something, I hold three but also just something, that says a lot when you play Man City but that has come from the other results, even the one against Arsenal. Our performances in the main have been pretty good and we have taken a decent points total from the teams we have played in this performance.
Defending, organised, everyone on the same page
After 12 or 15 minutes last week it didn’t seem like it but for long periods today we defended really well. There were bits of our first defending not as good but the secondary, like the crosses especially, we covered blocks and made it difficult for them to score. We have seen some ridiculous scores in the Premier League with sixes and sevens and the quality of defending hasn’t looked good enough. this season and I want us to be hard to beat defence but I also want to keep scoring four and three. Today we got the balance right on how we defended. ]
Praise for Lukasz Fabianski? Two massive saves late on
Part of the team and you need your goalkeeper, especially against quality sides, you need him to make saves when the defenders have not quite got there and you need him. Thankfully there were a couple of moments where done it but we expect it, he is a good keeper and for us to be successful we need those koment.
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