David Moyes is relishing the prospect of a full-blooded Premier League London derby at Tottenham Hotspur on Sunday.
The Hammers face their second cross-capital contest in a row, having come from behind to draw 1-1 with Chelsea at home last weekend.
That extended his team’s unbeaten run to a fourth game – although having drawn with both Newcastle and the Blues in that sequence, the manager is keen to turn those stalemates into victories.
With derby bragging rights on the line too, Moyes is keen for his side to take that next step in north London.
Tottenham have a host of good players and a really good team.
I couldn’t say there is a good time to play them, but this is the time that we’ve got the game and we’ve got to play them, so we’ll try and go into it really positively and we’ll try to show the form that we’re finding more of at the moment.
If we can do that, then we’ll give them a good game.
I’m thinking about Antonio Conte and that he is looking after himself, and he is right to do so.
He’d be a big miss [on the touchline] for any club because he’s a top manager and he has been a big success anywhere he has been. He puts big demands on himself and his teams and he works them so well. He will be a miss, of course, but they’ve got a good group of players at Tottenham and I’m sure they will get on with the job.
I’ve enjoyed managing against him. He’s had very good teams over many years and he’s an elite manager. I’ve got great respect for him.
It’s really difficult [to have to miss games]. As a manager the one place you want to be is on the touchline with your team.
You always feel it’s very difficult to have an effect and you feel responsible. During Covid I found it really hard watching games from the flat I was in at the time and trying to watch it and send messages at half-time and leaving people to it.
It also taught me a wee bit, in that sometimes you have to sit back and take the emotion out of it.
I’m sure Antonio won’t want to be at home, but obviously his health is the most important thing and we wish him well.
I can tell you we’re starting to get better form and score a few goals.
We’re beginning to be a bit more resilient again too, which is good. So we want to keep all of those good things going. We don’t want draws though, we want wins, and we need to pick up more of them.
I didn’t think there was a bad atmosphere when we were losing. Far from it, we were quite buoyant and kept our heads up. We’ve had some good results and we’ve had signs that players are getting back to form.
Jarrod Bowen has got a few goals and Michail Antonio is getting better as well. Lucas Paquetá is beginning to settle and everybody is looking at Nayef Aguerd as well, so there are a lot of good things coming through and we want to maintain that.
I’ve had a look back at the home game against Spurs and it was a close game. Tottenham were probably the better team in the first half and we got better as the game went on.
I think Tottenham have kept their levels up for most of the season, we’ve maybe not reached where we want to be.
It gives us something to reach for, we’ve got room to improve and we want to keep doing that.
[Lucas Paquetá and Nayef Aguerd going off with] injuries has not been great news, but it’s part of the game.
If you look back over the last two or three years we had a brilliant injury record – very few people out injured, and it’s only really since we came back for this season [that the numbers increased].
Whether that’s because of having 60-odd games last year, the same the year before, if that’s got something to do with it I couldn’t be sure.
It’s certainly affected us with the new players. Paquetá had a shoulder injury at Southampton, with his collar bone, he had something with the same shoulder last week.
Aguerd got injured at the start of the season, we missed Kurt Zouma for a chunk of it, we were without Craig Dawson at the start of the season too, so we’ve had a really difficult period with injuries.
But, it’s the same [for others]. Tottenham have injuries as well and we’re not on our own with that.
I’m fully aware of the rivalry between the two clubs.
We’re trying to give West Ham supporters as many good occasions as we can. We’re all well aware of how important it is to the supporters here, so hopefully we can do that.
