Ahead of West Ham United’s return to Premier League action with a trip to Arsenal on the 26 December, David Moyes spoke to West Ham TV about the last 12 months, hopes for the second half of the season, and the January Transfer window.
It’s been six weeks or so since our last Premier League fixture – how would you reflect on the break for the World Cup?
DM: Looking back now, I think it was needed. We had about 24 games and it took its toll, a little bit. We had 13 games where we only had two days of recovery - so, to go out and play again, it's really difficult. The Thursday/Sunday schedule is never easy.
Because of that I'm hoping that we will benefit from the break and that the players come back, nice and fresh. And what I've seen from them I've enjoyed, hopefully we are going to get back to our levels in the coming weeks and months.
Do you see similarities between this break for the World Cup and the break for Covid two years ago?
DM: I’ve seen it a little bit. We've not quite had the same [challenges that came because of Covid]. At that time, we were training the players in one-on-ones and two players training at a time in half-hour slots. [In this break] we've all been back training and I've been pleased with the players; they’ve come back well.
We're going to try and get them, aggressive in how they play and try to get the points in the bag. I think we've been pretty close on several occasions, but we need to get closer, and we need to find ways of getting more points.
The World Cup itself has provided plenty of highlights for our international stars – you must’ve been really proud of seeing how well your players, and staff (Paul Nevin with England and Marc Rochon with Croatia), fared in Qatar?
DM: It shows a lot of signs of [the quality] we have got here. And also, you have got two Italian internationals in the building, and two Czech Republic internationals.
So, we've got a bundle of international players, and obviously the ones most people will know about went to the World Cup. So, it’s signs we're doing the right things.
What we definitely have is a stronger group of players than we've had before, which we needed for dealing with European football. We've just not shown it well enough in the league yet. But also, a lot of players who have been here for a while know as well, they need to come back into form, which we're looking forward to. And by what I'm seeing [on the training pitch], I'm hoping that will come soon.
We've got a couple of staff members who've been away with Croatia (performance analyst Marc Rochon) and with England (assistant coach Paul Nevin) as well, which is always really important because they bring back information for us about good practice, and all the things which are required.
So overall, the big thing now is to get them all back fit and healthy and get them focused on West Ham again.
As the curtain sets on 2022, how would you reflect on the last 12 months?
DM: The last 12 months I'd say it's been probably more difficult, as we ended 2021 in great form. We were probably going into 2022 very close to the top four at that time but we have struggled to score as many goals as possible from that time onwards.
But we had some unbelievable nights in Europe whether it was away in Lyon or home to Sevilla. We had an incredible journey at that time. We had some brilliant results in the league as well. So, I would say that we finished last season in a pretty good style.
We have not started as well as we'd like this season, but overall, the margins have been really small; there's been a lot of things that have just not quite gone for us.
Now, we have to try and turn [those margins] into good news, more positivity, and hopefully more goals.
Christmas is on the horizon, a time when everyone at the Club comes together to support the local community. How important is it for football clubs to give something back at this time of the year?
DM: It's hugely important because a football club is to do with the community and where it all started.
It was great that the people from the Foodbank were [at the training ground]. You see the effort they put into it, so many of these people are just volunteers but they're doing it and helping out all over the community.
I have to say well done to the players, and well done to the people who are involved in it because we want everybody to have a good Christmas, but we also want to try and help people as much as we can.
The transfer window will re-open in a few days time – do you expect it to be a busy period for the club?
DM: No, I don't really expect this January to be busy. But you ever can tell?
What I do think is that the club did really well with its business in the summer. We brought in eight players, and it's more than you would normally want to bring in. But with losing a few players, and with a couple who we knew was going to probably go on loan, if we didn't replace them, we would have been short.
And if anything, we were really short on numbers last year. So, bringing in nine is more than you'd really want to bring in and then getting them settled in is not easy.
But I don't expect there to be a great deal of business in January - maybe injuries, maybe something else comes into it, which changes our thinking as we go along. But I just wouldn't see us doing an awful lot of business in January.
Looking to 2023, there’s plenty to be excited about?
DM: Definitely. And everybody's been at it. You look at the last two and a half years and you'll see it's been some of the finest stuff we've had here at West Ham for a long, long time. We want to pick it up again, we want to get back to that level - it tasted much better when it was like that and we want to get back there.
I think the European football over the last year or two has given us really something to hang on to. It will be much harder at this moment in time, but my aim is still to push to try and become a team who consistently fights for Europe whether it be through winning a cup or whether it be a league position again - that’s what we've done in the last couple of years.
We need to get a bit of momentum going, that's what I'm looking for. To get off to a good start and try and get the results that we need.
Finally, it’s Arsenal and your good friend Mikel Arteta who are first up for us after the break, with a trip to the Emirates on Boxing Day. What are your thoughts ahead of that one?
DM: It's a really tough game to come back to. With them being in the form they were in, they’ll be desperate to try and get off to the same start.
But we need to try and show that we are improved, and we need to get our international players back and ready to play because we've got a really important second half of the season coming up.
We want to play well for them [the travelling fans]. But we have to remember the level we're going to play - Arsenal at the moment is doing so well. We played well there last year and were a bit unlucky. There has been some really interesting games [between West Ham and Arsenal] so hopefully, we can give them a really good game.
