David Moyes has set his sights on West Ham United beating Silkeborg IF at London Stadium on Thursday evening and securing a place in the UEFA Europa Conference League round of 16.
The Hammers know a point against the Danes would be enough to top Group B and avoid the inconvenience of needing to go to Romania on Matchday Six and get a positive result against FCSB to ensure first place and avoid the knockout play-off round in the New Year.
With four Premier League matches and an EFL Cup third-round tie with Blackburn Rovers to fit in before the Irons break up for the 2022 FIFA World Cup finals on Saturday 12 November, Moyes would welcome any opportunity to tailor his team selection for specific fixtures.
Moyes praised Thursday’s visitors, who pushed his side hard in Denmark in West Ham’s 3-2 win there in September, and also spoke to the challenge of maintaining a fit and fresh squad through late-night European finishes on Thursdays and the busy Premier League calendar...
Winning on Thursday would see us win the group so we're fully aware of it and we hope we can do that.
So, we'll go out with intention to win it and go out with the intention of getting through and hopefully getting it done early.
I think whatever you say, we’ve still got Premier League games to play. We've got Manchester United at the end of this week, when we’ve already had a game on Monday and have got another game on Thursday.
What we all know is if we can win this game, it puts an awful lot to bed, to especially later on because obviously you miss a couple of games in the knockout play-off round.
I don't know if we have mastered playing Thursday-Sunday, and actually I don't know if teams have got over it, if I'm being honest.
We did master it in as much as we won the group last year and we got ourselves in a really good position, but I think when it came to the quarter-finals and the semi-finals, we had home and away ties in the knockout stages and we were in an important period in the Premier League.
If you get through here, it’s March before you play again [in the round of 16], so then if you’re good enough to get through, you have the quarter-finals and semi-finals in a period of the season in the Premier League when you have to play all of your [first-choice] players in all of the games, when in the early round you can change five or six players in each game and they don’t have to play every Thursday-Sunday.
When you get to those latter stages, you have to play nearly your best team and that means it has an effect [in the Premier League], and it did have an effect on us last year.
I think we've done it quite well and I'm pleased about that, but we strengthened the squad partly because I felt that probably, come February or March last year, we didn't really have the numbers to cope with the games we had.
I think the Thursday-Sunday thing, there is a psychological thing about it.
But I definitely think that the lack of recovery time, getting ready, and the lack of preparation time between the game on a Thursday and the next game on a Sunday, you have to think that you're not away from the stadium until midnight after most Thursday games, and if you're away from home and having to travel back, at best you have a day to try and get yourself ready for the next game. And to be prepared for the Premier League games, that's really difficult.
We have got Manchester United away in the Premier League on Sunday and I have to think about both scenarios. But let's be fair, I’ve thought about them in all the games.
The next game is always the most important and our next game is Silkeborg and that is the most important game for reasons which that have already been mentioned. But we've also got to consider other things, we have to keep the players fresh and ready for the level of games we've got coming up.
I see this as an opportunity for us to go really far in another competition – we got to the [Europa League] semi-finals last year and my aim is to hopefully go further than that and do better.
It's easy saying that just now, because we know that there'll be other teams coming into it later on as well.
But to win the FA Cup or the League Cup in this country is really difficult, when you look at the quality of Manchester City, Liverpool and Arsenal the domination those teams have had, whether it be the league or whether it be the cup competitions, I think we’ve got to do everything we can to win this competition.
We've qualified at the moment [for the knockout stages], so you'd have to say ‘job done’ from when the draw came out, so now the icing on the cake would be to win the group, miss a round and go straight through to the round of 16.
Silkeborg are a really good team.
We had Viborg in the qualifier, who are third in the Danish League, and now we’ve got Silkeborg who are fourth in the Danish League.
I saw Sevilla went to Copenhagen and drew with a team who are halfway up the table, so I actually think that Danish football in an incredible place at the moment.
The Danish national team are tenth in the world rankings and I think they’re producing a lot of really good players, their style is excellent and I really admire them.
The two teams we’ve played have played really, really well against us and it’s shown, so if anybody thinks we’re taking this any differently, we’re not because they’re a really good side, but we’ve also got a big game at Manchester United on Sunday and had a big game on Monday as well, so we have to really consider it.
We’ve got 12 points and we’d hope that would see us win the group, but at the minute it’s not enough, so we’ll have to see if we can pick up more points and see ourselves top the group.
