David Moyes felt his West Ham United team had done enough to avoid ending the 2022/23 Premier League season with a 2-1 defeat at Leicester City.
The Hammers played well with the ball for long periods at King Power Stadium, particularly during a dominant second-half performance, but were left to rue one poor piece of defending and a slew of late missed chances as the Foxes edged a victory.
The first half was a fairly even affair, but Leicester, who knew only victory could see them avoid relegation, went in ahead through Harvey Barnes’ well-taken goal.
The Irons then controlled the opening period of the second half, only to fall two goals down when Wout Faes outjumped Nayef Aguerd to head in Youri Tielemans’ left-wing free-kick.
Moyes’ men did not give up and went close through substitutes Jarrod Bowen and Danny Ings before the latter played in Pablo Fornals, who avoided the attentions of five Leicester defenders before sliding an inch-perfect shot in off the base of Daniel Iversen’s left post with eleven minutes to play.
West Ham piled on the pressure late on, but could not find an equaliser that would have seen them finish above Wolverhampton Wanderers, and instead saw the east Londoners have to make do with 14th in the table.
As for Leicester, who did the Premier League double over the Hammers this season and replaced Brendan Rodgers with Dean Smith as manager in April in a bid to stave off relegation, they will kick-off the 2023/24 season in the EFL Championship.
I felt that we played well today at times.
We gave away a stupid free-kick [for Leicester City’s second goal] when there was no need to do so and then we didn’t defend the ball into the box well enough, which is unlike us and something which I’m not enjoying seeing.
Then we had some really big moments to get ourselves at least a draw, so I think we should have taken that from the game at worst.
The style is important but not as important as winning.
We’ve had to play in a style to win the games in last month or two of the season. Today we played in a different style – the players took the ball better, they passed it better, they moved it better, but in the end when we got into the final third we didn’t create enough chances or get the good finishes to it.
These are parts of how it is and recently we’ve had a few games where we’ve not had as much of the ball and less possession but found a way of getting ourselves three or four goals. When it comes down to that I’d probably have rather had the three or four goals.
Pablo manipulates the ball and finds a way of getting a goal quite often.
He’s been a bit unlucky for long parts of the season but he’s playing well. He played really well at Alkmaar, he played really well against Leeds United and I thought he played well today. He’s certainly putting himself in the frame to get a start because of how well he’s doing and he’s scoring goals, which is the thing we need.
Now we need to manage the week or so we’ve got before the final.
We’ve got a near fully-fit squad, they’re all in really good spirits. Round the Club everybody is excited, but we now need to make sure we keep the excitement up, but get it ready and get the players at the right levels to go out and perform as well as we’ll need to do, because we’re up against a really tough opponent and it will take a mammoth effort to see us win the trophy.
There’s no big celebration because we’ve avoided relegation, far from it.
I think there were games in the run-in where we’ve come from two-down against Arsenal, we’ve beaten Manchester United and went away to win away at Fulham and Bournemouth in this period.
We’ve had some really good results and some of them we’ve had to dig deep to get. In between that we’ve had Thursday night games as well and we’ve had to try to find a way of winning Premier League games in a period when we were under so much pressure.
It’s terrific that we’ve got to this point, but it’s not something that we will be celebrating because we’ve finished 14th in the league.
Dean Smith was just in here and I know how it would have felt if it had been me, I’d have been completely devastated for the football club as well.
There were periods in our season where we felt that way and felt how are we going to get ourselves in a better position.
The results are what they are and thankfully the most important thing is that we got ourselves in a strong position and dug deep to win the games when we had to.
