David Moyes is looking forward to the challenge of facing Manchester United as West Ham United go in search of three vital Premier League points on Sunday evening.
The Hammers are looking for the win that would lift them further clear of the Premier League's bottom three, although Moyes knows his team will have to perform at their best if they are to claim a result against the Red Devils.
Having lost narrowly at Old Trafford twice this term in league and FA Cup, the manager is determined to go better this time.
When he faced the media for his pre-match briefing, Moyes discussed the Red Devils, his team's schedule, Michail Antonio's improved form and more...
You learn a lot when you watch all the good teams play.
Manchester United are a really good team with terrific players. The manager [Erik ten Hag] has done a brilliant job with them this year, so overall they’ve got a good side.
We had to play one of the best teams a few weeks ago in Arsenal [and got a result]. Now we’ve got to play another of the best teams in the Premier League in Manchester United, so we’ll have to play very well.
I’m looking forward to it, we need to play at our best. If we play at our best we’ll give them a really good game and if we get the crowd behind us the way they did against Arsenal, it’ll give us a great opportunity of getting a result.
Erik ten Hag has approached the job at Manchester United in a really good way.
He’s had a good response and he’s getting Manchester United much closer to the places that they want to be.
We felt we could have got more when we played Manchester United earlier this season and there have been a few games where we could say the same thing.
We did a lot of good things at Old Trafford but we didn’t come away with the results and if you look at recent seasons you think back to when Jesse Lingard scored a winner for them and I brought on Mark Noble in the 91st minute and he missed a penalty for an equaliser.
A few of the games against Manchester United have been pretty close, so hopefully we can give them a good game and obviously it’s really important.
We’re very confident that we can stay in the Premier League.
If we play to our best we’ll give any team a really good game, so I’m hoping that we play to our best and if we do we’ll certainly get the extra points that we probably need to do at this present time.
I’ve always said that the Premier League has to be your priority, and when you start talking about the semi-finals of European competitions you have another decision as well.
It’s something that is very hard to get to, to get to this situation, so we have to try to manage both the best we can.
We’ll continue to try to play positively. We’ve done that in recent weeks and we’ve had some difficult games, but overall I’ve been pretty pleased with a lot of it.
If Michail Antonio keeps in the form he’s been in for the last month or so then it’ll give us every chance.
He’s getting goals, he’s been harder to play against and he’s been leading the line much better than he has done.
I hope he can keep his because form up because we’re at a time of the season where you’re getting into the big games.
Flynn Downes is doing a good job and progressing well.
I’ve said many times when you bring in boys from the Championship they can take a bit of time. Some can go a bit faster and Flynn is doing a good job. We’ve trusted him in a lot of big games.
I think it’s a really difficult kick-off time, for away supporters especially.
If we were going up to Old Trafford for seven o’clock on a Sunday night, we’d be saying this doesn’t sound correct.
But I’ve been fortunate enough to manage in Spain where there are lots of Sunday evening kick-offs and it’s part of the culture.
The thing we probably find difficult is it’s not part of our culture, but let’s be fair it wasn’t too long ago we were saying Sunday football wasn’t part of our culture and now it’s a regular thing.
I think we’ve got to understand that with the year we’ve had because of the World Cup there’s probably reasons why things have got to change, or maybe they’re having a look to see if maybe the public will enjoy Sunday night football.
But at the moment it seems slightly culturally different to what we would normally do in this country.
I think Manchester United and ourselves are the teams who have had the most difficult scheduling, but I do know we’re the team who has had the most two-day recoveries between games this season.
We’ve had a real difficult schedule, but would I put that down to the reason why we have a bit of sickness? No, I wouldn’t necessarily say that, but it’s not to say it isn’t.
