David Moyes had mixed feelings after West Ham United came from a goal down to lead before ultimately being forced to settle for a point at Leeds United.
The Irons arrived at Elland Road on a run of five Premier League defeats in a row, but produced a spirited performance that Joint-Chairman and lifelong supporter David Gold, who sadly passed away earlier on Wednesday at the age of 86, would surely have been proud of.
The visitors could easily have wilted after Wilfried Gnonto fired Leeds in front midway through the first half and ignited an already fired-up home crowd.
However, Moyes’ West Ham kept their composure, worked their way into the game and levelled through Lucas Paquetá’s penalty – awarded after Jarrod Bowen had been fouled by Pascal Struijk – on the stroke of half-time. And within a minute of the restart, the Londoners were in front when Gianluca Scamacca collected a wayward pass and fired low and unerringly into the bottom corner.
Crysencio Summerville could then have been sent-off for a high challenge on Vladimír Coufal, but referee David Coote opted only to book the Dutch winger, much to Moyes’ visible annoyance, and Leeds took advantage when Rodrigo smashed in an equaliser with 20 minutes to play.
And the manager could have been cursing a defeat had Michail Antonio not blocked Liam Cooper’s header and Łukasz Fabiański not made a superb late one-handed save to deny Rodrigo.
An eventful and dramatic game, then, at the end of an emotional day for everyone associated with West Ham United.
It was a difficult game to manage as there was a bit of rough and tumble, but we’ve got to be able to show that we can do that as well.
I thought we did it at times, but there were other times when I didn’t like it and I thought we didn’t win some headers and challenges which we should have done.
But, look, the players have shown great attitude and great commitment as they always do and we’ve got something out of the game tonight.
They had little bits of the game at the time that I was worried about before they opened the scoring, but I felt we would grow into it and could see us scoring.
When we went a goal down, I saw we stuck at it and earned the penalty kick and it was very well taken.
Gianluca then put us ahead, but there was a period after that when we didn’t play very well with the ball and made poor decisions.
We needed to somehow keep a hold and wrestle a lot more of the game at that time, but we didn’t and that was probably the reason which led to the pressure and we buckled to it.
We’ve lost a couple of goals from throw-ins from round the middle of the pitch and long throws and that’s really disappointing. When you see it, we should have stopped both of their goals.
Gianluca got a really good goal from distance which helped us in the second half, but we still lacked the bit when you thought we would build-up and nick a third goal.
We did miss a couple of opportunities – Nayef Aguerd missed a good chance from a header.
All centre-forwards need confidence from goals and that will. I liked his goal tonight, but good centre-forward goals are scored in the box and from crosses and tap-ins, so we need to get him on that level because we know he can do the other part.
It was a red card challenge [by Summerville on Coufal].
I think when the referee sees it back, he will be disappointed he didn’t do it.
The boy was off the pitch and comes on and gets him just below the knee. At the time, I was very close and I thought he more barged into him at the time, but it was a terrible challenge.
I’m really sad for David Gold’s family and was really disappointed to hear of his death today.
The time we had with him was really good. He would come in for his dinner at the training ground on a Thursday and come and see the players and say ‘hello’ for an hour and I found him a really nice man.
All I can ever say is he only ever wanted the best for West Ham, so if anybody has ever thought different to that, he generally was always only trying to the best for West Ham.
