Continuing to take steps forward was the theme of David Moyes’ pre-match press conference as he looked ahead to Saturday’s Premier League trip to Newcastle United.
The Hammers head to the North East having won their last two games by identical 2-0 scorelines against Everton and Derby County, to climb out of the Premier League’s bottom three and progress to the fifth round of the Emirates FA Cup.
Victory at Pride Park Stadium concluded a January which has built belief among Moyes’ squad again, following three wins, a draw and only one defeat in the last five games.
Now, a test awaits at Carabao Cup finalists and current third-placed Newcastle, but the boss is sure the positive momentum can continue.
We’ve had a couple of really good results and the win in the FA Cup at Derby was another boost to us.
We kept a clean sheet, which bodes well, and when you’re fighting for your results you’re looking for positives everywhere you can.
We are getting those positives – we got a great win against Everton the week before, too – so we want to build on it and get that momentum. We want to try and charge on.
I believe we can build that momentum.
I think we’ve got a good side and a good group of players. We’ve not shown it as much as we should have done and we have to do that now.
We’re getting not quite to the business end of the season yet, but we’re getting closer to it. We’re halfway through now and we have to try to perform.
Thankfully the last couple of games, we’ve won three out of four and it’s given us something to talk about, feel much more positive and gain a bit more confidence around the team. It’s great to see Jarrod scoring a few goals, Micky Antonio back on the scoresheet, and that’ll do them the world of good too.
Winning is always the key. I’d like performances to improve, but when I came in a couple of years ago, what was important was getting out of the situation we were in.
We had to do that first and foremost, then you can look at starting to play better, and now at the moment we have to make sure we pick up the wins.
Thankfully if the last couple of games we’ve got a bit of both – good signs of bits of the performances getting better, good signs of doing the right things, and keeping clean sheets which is really important.
Reaching the Carabao Cup is a great achievement for Newcastle and a great achievement for Eddie Howe.
From where they were this time last season to where they are now just shows you how football can change at times. Congratulations to them.
Hopefully they’ve all had plenty of Newcastle Brown Ale since winning their semi-final!
All we can say is that they are doing very, very well. They’ve set some very good standards in the opening part of the season and we know we’ve got a tough game on Saturday – everybody does who goes to St James’ Park.
It is good news that Bruno Guimarães is suspended because he is a really good player, but let’s be fair, they have a team full of good players at the moment.
And more importantly, players who maybe weren’t considered good players are playing very well. That’s a sign of good management but also shows that the players are working hard to improve themselves.
There are a lot of positives Newcastle can take, but we have to get back to that – we were a bit like that maybe a year ago ourselves. We know what it feels like and we know we have to try to get back to those levels.
It was a brilliant service for David Gold earlier this week.
It had lots of humour, it had lots of moments, and seeing somebody who was brought up with very little and went on to play for West Ham in the youth leagues and go onto become a chairman and owner – the send-off he got was great.
I think he would be incredibly proud of his family for how they dealt with it, and I think he would have been incredibly proud of West Ham and how they made the day go for the family as well.
Flynn Downes played really well for us against Liverpool and Manchester United in the earlier Premier League games this season.
The level of competition has [made things hard for] Flynn. We brought in Lucas Paquetá, who is proving to be more of a deep-lying midfielder than a ten, which we brought Flynn in to give us cover there for Tomáš Souček, Declan Rice and Manuel Lanzini.
Flynn has done well, I think he’s improving. I don’t know how many players I’ve brought up from the Championship, but let me tell you it is a lot over the years – people like Joleon Lescott, Leighton Baines, Tim Cahill, you can go on, and quite often they don’t hit the ground running.
Leighton Baines and Phil Jagielka didn’t play for me for six months, near enough, when I was at Everton. We brought them out of the Championship and they went on to be full England internationals.
Sometimes they have to be patient, wait their time, wait for their opportunities and hopefully Flynn comes under that category and goes on to be a top player.
