David Moyes will not allow one defeat to define West Ham United’s season.
The Hammers lost for the first time in eight matches and just the third time in 18 games in all competitions in 2021/22 on Saturday, when they went down 1-0 at Wolverhampton Wanderers in the Premier League.
It was West Ham’s first loss on their travels in 12 matches dating back to mid-April, and ended a run of four straight Premier League wins, putting the result into perspective.
And while Moyes was disappointed with the way his team played at Molineux, he also paid tribute to Wolves’ own performance and suggested his team could have secured at least a share of the points had they taken their own opportunities.
Instead, Jarrod Bowen and Michail Antonio missed the target with a header and shot respectively, and the ball just would not drop kindly for a Claret and Blue shirt when West Ham pushed bodies forward into the Wolves penalty area late on.
Now, the Irons will regroup for a midweek trip to Austria to face Rapid Vienna in the UEFA Europa League, knowing a victory would guarantee them top spot in Group H and earn direct qualification to the round of 16, followed by three Premier League games in seven days away to Manchester City, then home to Brighton & Hove Albion and Chelsea.
It was not our best today.
We weren’t at our best and didn’t play as well as we have done and there were quite a lot of disappointing aspects of our game today, if I’m honest.
Look, we just about hung in there and tried to keep going but we didn’t really play as well as we can, but we mustn’t be fooled by Wolves because they’re a decent team, in a good league position and have shown good form for parts of the season, so it was a tight game.
We had players away on international duty but let’s not think for one minute that’s an excuse because it’s far from it.
We want more international players and I want to bring more to the Club in the future and I want to develop the ones we’ve got here and help them get capped by their countries. We enjoy seeing our players play for their countries.
There is part of that and I do agree it gives you less time to work with your players and we had the journey up here on Friday, so all those things do play a part.
I thought we started well for the first 20 minutes, then we struggled and lost a little bit of faith because the forward players didn’t make it count when we had the chances to make it happen.
They grew in confidence, Wolves, because we didn’t take our chances and they got a little bit of control of the game and we had to suffer a bit without the ball.
Look, as I said, all the games in the Premier League are so close and there will be times in the game when you don’t have the ball and they do, so it was a tough game.
We always try to take things one game at a time, rather than talk about where we might finish.
We’ve got a wall of football games at the moment which we’re all looking at, so we take each game as it comes.
We didn’t quite do enough today but we could have nicked a draw at then. People might have said we didn’t deserve it but maybe in the scheme of things, we did.
We just never looked like we could connect with the ball in the box today or hit the target, so it was disappointing.
We travel to Austria this week now to face Rapid Vienna in the UEFA Europa League on Thursday, then we’ve got Manchester City away in the Premier League next Sunday, then we’ve got Brighton and then Chelsea at home.
I’m thrilled that we’ve qualified from the group and I’m confident that along the line we will take the points we need from the final two games to win the group.