David Moyes felt his West Ham United side’s efforts did not merit a 1-0 defeat away to Nottingham Forest.
Taiwo Awoniyi scored the only goal of Sunday’s Premier League outing from close range but the Hammers saw a host of opportunities fail to find the Forest net, with Saïd Benrahma seeing a goal disallowed following a VAR check and both the Algerian and Pablo Fornals striking the underside of the crossbar from distance.
Declan Rice also had a penalty saved after a handball in the Forest area on a frustrating afternoon in front of goal for the Irons.
Speaking to West Ham TV, the manager admitted his side were not up to the expected standards in the opening exchanges of the first half but believes the Irons did not deserve to lose the contest…
Boss, was today just a case of the goals not going in?
“For me, not really. We defended really poorly, quite often, and we didn’t do that well enough. It cost us a goal through very poor defending, and gave them a chance.
“We have to blame ourselves. Maybe we could have scored three or four goals. But it wasn’t to be today.”
It wasn’t our day, was it?
“I think we could say that started early in the game when the goal didn’t count and got disallowed. There were quite a few bits that didn’t feel like they went for us but that happens. You hope maybe, in other games this season, it will go for us.
“The first 20 minutes were really poor. I thought we grew into the game and I don’t think we deserved the result we got, but that’s the one we got in the end.
“We made enough chances to score the goals but we just didn’t take them”
Nottingham Forest gave us a hard game today...
“They did, especially in the first 20-25 minutes. We were expecting it to be tough and we knew they were going to come out, and it was a terrific atmosphere in here. It’s a great old stadium, so it’s what we expected.
“When you play in that atmosphere, it’s great for them and it’s great for their players here. It shows you how much they’ve been waiting to get top flight football here.
“We didn’t cope with it particularly well in the opening 20 minutes but we grew into the game and got a bit better, without being spectacular.
It’s a big week coming up with a return to European games…
“We’re looking forward to it. We worked hard last year to be in Europe so we’ll try and do everything we can to get through and qualify for the group stages.”
