West Ham United boss David Moyes gave an honest assessment of his side’s performance after they were defeated 2-0 by Newcastle United in their 2020/21 season opener on Saturday evening.
The Hammers twice hit the woodwork in an open first 45 minutes, as both Angelo Ogbonna and Pablo Fornals were denied by the crossbar, but were unable to force the opener and were punished after half time.
Callum Wilson and Jeff Hendrick hit the back of the net for the visitors to take the points back to the North East and Moyes admitted that he did not think the Hammers deserved anything from the game.
He was especially disappointed by their sluggish start, given their fine form at the back end of last season, but by the same token knows that run – less than two months ago – is evidence that they can improve swiftly, starting with a midweek Carabao Cup second round tie against Charlton Athletic before they travel to Arsenal next Saturday.
“I didn’t enjoy the performance and didn’t enjoy the game,” Moyes said. “We didn’t show enough quality and I thought it was a disappointing game. I didn’t particularly think it was officiated well tonight, but that’s not the reason we lost.
"It was miles off what we did at the back end of last season. We hoped that we would start off the same way, in the same form we were at the end of last season. We didn’t tonight – Newcastle made it difficult for us, but I’d have liked us to have done much better.”
West Ham were one of the Premier League’s most free-scoring teams after football resumed in June, scoring 14 goals in their final seven games of 2019/20 and although they drew a blank against the Magpies, Moyes does believe they can get back to that level quickly.
“The group who played tonight played very well, only six weeks ago,” he added. “We were one of the form teams at the end of lockdown, we hoped we could get another good performance out of them tonight, but it wasn’t to be.
“We’ve got to make sure we look at the next game, concentrate on playing better than we did tonight. We can do, we can play much better than we showed tonight.”
