David Moyes believes West Ham United can come roaring back in our UEFA Europa League round of 16 tie after Sevilla edged a tight first leg in southern Spain on Thursday night.
Munir scored the only goal of the game on the hour mark, finishing a well-worked free-kick to give the La Liga high-fliers a slender advantage, but Moyes was heartened by his side’s overall showing.
Nikola Vlašić went close to giving the Hammers an early lead when his powerful header was saved, while the visitors dug in after Sevilla opened the scoring to ensure we would return to London Stadium next Thursday with real hopes of progressing to the quarter-finals.
For that to happen, Moyes knows his team need to show a more ruthless side to their game, but he was quick to praise the effort they put into the first 90 minutes.
I feel that we can be proud of the work we put in.
We came up against a really good European team, an experienced team and I thought we came really close tonight to getting a draw.
We’ve just got to turn these games [into results] – on Saturday at Liverpool we could easily have turned that into a draw, tonight we could probably have had a draw.
It’s a lack of concentration a little bit for the goal, then there was a period for 15 or 20 minutes in the second half when they got their tails up and we had to weather it, which we did.
We gave the ball away quite a bit at the start of the second half and it gave them an opportunity to grow into the game
We’re right in the tie.
Seville have got a really good style – it’s why they’re second in La Liga, it’s why they are ahead of so many good clubs, so you have to look at them and say you’re up against a big opposition.
But I thought we ran them really close tonight and I’m sure we’ll run them close when we play them next week as well.
We’ll get a goal next week, I’ve got no doubt about that, and what we need to do is make sure we don’t concede any.
They are a good team who keep the ball and they might make it difficult for us. We’re going to have to probably chase tha ball at different times, but ultimately we will go into the game feeling that we are right in the tie.
If you’d have given me 1-0 I might have said: ‘Yeah, I’ll take that’ because we are right in it.
Our travelling support was fantastic and I can’t wait to see 60,000 next week at London Stadium.
Tonight our supporters sang, the Sevilla supporters sang, it was a fantastic experience and we will need them next week. We need them all the time and we’ll need them next week to influence decisions, make it hard for referees to make calls and to make things go in our favour.