David Moyes is hoping for a belated birthday gift of three Premier League points when his West Ham United team take on Liverpool at London Stadium on Wednesday.
After turning 60 on Tuesday, the manager will want his celebrations to extend to a second day as he eyes another step towards top-flight safety.
Having collected seven points from the last three games, as well as sealing progress to the semi-finals of the UEFA Europa Conference League, Moyes has been happy with the progress the Hammers have made in recent weeks – he just wants that to continue on Wednesday.
Here is what he had to say in his pre-match media briefing…
I turned 60 today and I’m thrilled that Roy Hodgson is back [as it means there’s a manager older than me]!
I remember Jürgen Klopp mentioned it to me earlier in the season [as he was next behind me] and it didn’t seem right being the oldest manager in the Premier League.
It’s what longevity does to you and sometimes if you can stay the course then you do become the oldest one. Roy has shown that hopefully there’s plenty more years to come as well.
I don’t think it would be fair to say what we think we need to stay up.
But we do feel that we have to get more points that we have at the moment, that’s for sure. If we have to get more, that means the teams below us have to get more as well and I think we’re all aware of that.
Other results do matter at this time of the season, no matter what anybody says, but more importantly you have to look after your own [results]. If you win your own you take care of your business.
We came from 2-0 down against Arsenal, which was a great result and it’s given us a lot of confidence.
We’ll go into the next game trying to play as well as we can. We had a very good win at the weekend, but now we have another incredibly difficult opponent who over the past few seasons have been up there with the top teams in the world, never mind the Premier League.
It’s not an easy thing to say how do you tackle Liverpool. They have so many good attacking players, they can change their squad around and I think the performances recently have shown they’re beginning to find their feet again.
Let’s be fair, they’ve never been far away. They’ve not been miles away from where they’ve been, but maybe by the standards that Liverpool and Jürgen Klopp set, maybe they feel like they have been.
They’re always going to be a difficult opponent, no matter what time you play them.
Pablo Fornals is someone who has done a great job for us over the last few years.
He's just been unfortunate that he’s not been able to find himself in the team more often. Sometimes in football that’s how it goes.
I think all players are passionate and some will show it in different ways.
Every player I know wants to do well, they want to score goals, they want to be involved in winning teams – I don’t think I’ve known it any other way.
In Pablo’s situation I think he feels he probably should be getting more minutes and overall [in his celebration at Bournemouth] he’s thought I’ve got an opportunity here and I’ve come on and scored a goal. It was a really good goal as well, so we’re pleased for Pablo.
As far as Lucas Paquetá goes, I think you could look through so many clubs where they’ve brought in players and it’s taken them time to settle.
Lucas Paquetá is beginning to settle in, he’s getting used to it a little more, he’s getting used to the Premier League, the intensity and maybe the way the game is played in this league, it takes a bit of time.
It is the FA Youth Cup final on Tuesday night and I’m thrilled for the boys because they also won the league last week and now they have a chance to win the FA Youth Cup as well.
Obviously it will be a tough encounter to go to Arsenal at their stadium, but I think you tend to find from an FA Youth Cup team you can get two or three players coming through and eventually make their way to the first team.
That’s the aim, you hope the reason for it is the development of the young players but it also shows that they have reached a good level.
You can see by winning the league and getting to the Youth Cup final it gives you an idea there’s a promising group of players there.
I don’t think there’s much more you could say about Jürgen as a manager because he’s been at the top of the tree for so long.
European finals, Premier Leagues, etcetera – and at Dortmund too – I think everybody has known about Jürgen from when he started out and was making his way.
He’s done a great job at Liverpool, undoubtedly. I don’t think there’s any Liverpool supporter who wouldn’t think Jürgen Klopp has been a huge success in his time there.,
The praise for Jürgen would only be what most people always say about him – he’s always been an incredibly difficult opponent because the teams always work you hard, they press you, close you down and play really good football. They’ve had some top, talented footballers in their team as well.
We’ve thought about Trent Alexander-Arnold’s role, definitely, because he’s a very talented footballer.
As everybody knows, his deliveries, his use of the ball, his range of passing – he has all those traits of a very good quarterback-type footballer.
Also, he’s a good defender as well and has been an England international for many years too. For many years people have thought about Trent does he play in midfield, does he play as a full-back, and at the moment Liverpool have put him in there [the middle] a little bit more often and he’s played very well for them.
We’ve been really disappointed with our set-pieces all season.
Anybody who’s watched us [would say] we’ve not scored as many or looked as big a threat. We’re not jumping about thinking we’ve done a great job on it this year because we’ve not, we’ve just been okay and we’ve certainly missed Craig Dawson in attacking them.
In the main we’ve been pretty strong defensively and it plays a big part that we have to be that way. I think we are a threat but I don’t think we’ve shown it this year.
