West Ham United manager David Moyes knows he needs to find a way of getting his team back to their top form if they are to maintain their challenge at the top end of the Premier League table this season.
The Hammers missed a chance to move back into the division’s top four when they had to settle for a point from Saturday’s 1-1 draw with Newcastle United, after Joe Willock cancelled out Craig Dawson’s 32nd-minute opener just before half-time.
The Irons gave everything effort-wise, as is the norm, but the quality to open up a well-organised Newcastle team was not there often enough on a wet and windy afternoon at London Stadium, leaving the manager feeling frustrated.
Overall, though, Moyes didn’t feel his team’s performance merited more than the point they received, and says his focus will remain on raising their levels for the final 12 Premier League matches, as well as FA Cup and UEFA Europa League last-16 ties.
We didn’t play well today so to get a point out of it is something.
We have to recognise that we’re not quite at it. We probably need to start individually, I’ll check to see if we think we’re doing the right things to get them back [to their levels], but ultimately we need to find a way of getting a better level of performance than we’re getting at the moment.
We’re good at set pieces and we got another goal from one, but I’m more miffed that we haven’t played well again.
I’m pulling my hair out that I just can’t get one or two players back at it, or closer than they are. So we’re going to have to look closely to see what we can do about it.
The work-rate is there, 100 per cent.
There’s no questioning anybody [in that regard]. If anyone questioned any of our players on their effort or commitment, I’d back the players up 100 per cent.
But what we’re lacking at the moment is being more creative on the ball, being correct on the ball, even doing the correct things defensively.
I didn’t think we cleared our box well today at all and we didn’t show good designs in our play, in truth. All of those things come before anybody could question that we’re not working hard.
So I think it’s the other things we have to look at first.
It is four games unbeaten [in all competitions].
The Premier League is not an easy league to be in, but also one point doesn’t get you enough when you’re trying to be successful.
We knew today that it was a really important day to try and get three points but unfortunately we couldn’t.
Newcastle played very well.
We didn’t really cope so well with some of the stuff. We didn’t really feel that we were under huge pressure in the second half but we weren’t able to make anything happen to change anything.