David Moyes gave an honest assessment of his West Ham United team's performance after they slipped to a 1-0 Premier League defeat at Everton on Sunday.
The Hammers came out on the wrong end of a tight contest, as Neal Maupay's goal early in the second half proved enough to keep the points on Merseyside.
Saïd Benrahma struck a post and Maxwel Cornet forced a smart save from Asmir Begović as the Hammers searched for a route back into the contest, but Moyes felt his team had not done enough in the first part of the game to force a positive result.
Defeat at Goodison Park means West Ham will spend the September international break in the bottom three, and the manager knows he and his players need to up their performance levels to improve results when they return to action at home to Wolverhampton Wanderers on Saturday 1 October.
I don’t think we earned it enough.
We weren’t dynamic enough; we didn’t push hard enough; we didn’t force the issue enough. I think we woke up after they scored the goal – but prior to that, I don’t think we really played well. We turned the ball over and made a lot of mistakes on the ball.
It wasn’t that we were giving them loads of chances or and it was not as if we were making chances. That was the biggest problem for me was that we looked really short up front and did not do enough in that area.
The games [against Everton] have been tight recently.
We came here over the last two seasons and won two games narrowly. I thought today’s game was really tight. I didn’t think there was much in the game. We didn’t take any half opportunities we got. They didn’t have too many - but the one they got they took it pretty well.
We have played a few games. We are still trying to pull it together.
I have got to be honest, we are not as fluent as we have been. It is integrating new players, but I don’t think the players who were here have played as well as they did last season. You could see that today - not playing at the same level as they have done for a year or two.
The manager will always take responsibility, but those players have got to see it as well. We made a couple of shocking decisions in the game; players should have played better with the ball and didn’t do so.
You never want to go into the international break on a defeat.
We play quite regularly…so every break we get we try to use it well. I hope that the players are going to come back and see if they can find their form.
We are needing to get a level up from where they are playing at the moment. The manager always takes the responsibility, but I think there are a few players that need to find a performance level which we recognise them for.
