David Moyes has been speaking to the media ahead of West Ham United's Premier League clash at Wolverhampton Wanderers this weekend.
The Hammers head to Molineux Stadium for a rare Saturday 3pm GMT kick-off and seeking a second consecutive away win on the bounce, having defeated Brentford in the FA Cup third round last weekend.
Moyes' side will take confidence from the 2-0 Premier League triumph over Wolves at London Stadium in October and will aim for a fifth win in the last six matches against Saturday's opponents this weekend.
Ahead the trip to the West Midlands, Moyes spoke about the challenge Wolves present, their boss Julen Lopetegui and the Hammers’ hopes of building momentum after a successful outing at Brentford.
Brentford was a terrific result for us; it was not an easy place to go and win.
We found it hard against them in the league the week before as well. So, to go and get a good result against them was good. We're pleased because you want to be in a cup competition, as we are in the European competition too, so long may that continue.
I think Wolves have always been a good team.
They've had some really good players in their line-up over many years. We played against [Julen Lopetegui] last year when he was managing Sevilla, so we have a good idea of what his threats and his style are.
I see little bits of that [at Wolves] at the moment. They're looking to make a few signings as well; we'll sort of try to see what they're doing and adding. But it's always been a difficult game, Wolves. And over the years, they've been a good team.
I said at the start when I came in here that it's not a one-way [direction] you can just keep going up all the time.
It's very, very difficult to do that. And that's when you need a bit of patience. You need people to stick with you when it's not quite so good.
We said we would probably do much more business in the summer [than in this window].
We might try and do something in January if the right player becomes available. But at the moment we're going with what we've got.
For clubs like West Ham, even like my time at Everton, when you’re trying to bring in players and grow the club it can take a bit of time.
And I have to say that's just the way it is. I think when you're building unless you get so much money you can go and buy everything you need every year and every window you [need that time].
When you're not a club like that you need to build a team and then it goes stage by stage. We’ve had two really good years but we are just finding it a bit tougher this season.
We have looked at [the stats] and there's been very little fluctuation from last year to this year.
The difference is we've not scored the goals this year, which we got last year. We know we opened [last] season in really good form. Last pre-season, we just about won just all the games as we went into it. If you look at this pre-season, we didn't do that and the malaise fed into this season.
And we've really struggled whether it was scoring penalty kicks, whether it was getting goals at start the season, we just couldn't get it. And it's been a little bit of continuation. So that's really the biggest department we've not achieved in and we need to get back to is that.
We know that as coaches and the manager we are in control of [scoring more goals]. We take responsibility for it.
We support the players and try to give them confidence [to score goals]. But even, last week, we’re winning narrowly, so we're needing to find ways of scoring more goals and then maybe creating even more than we were doing last year.
We were really disappointed [with the goals we have conceded in recent matches following throw-ins].
Certainly, the two [goals we conceded] in the league game against Brentford we were incredibly disappointed with and obviously, we had the same as well in the other game at Arsenal. So, we are disappointed with that.
Nayef has played one full Premier League game, so it's really early days for him.
We would have hoped that by now he would have had the best part of 15-20 games under his belt but obviously because of his injury has not been able to do so. But we’re getting him used to it now and I still believe it will take him a while to get up to speed completely. But I think it's the same for nearly all the players joining the Premier League at the moment is taking them a little bit of time to settle in.
We've started the New Year pretty well, so we've got to try and keep that going.
I ended up a bit disappointed when we drew at Leeds United, but it was great that we won in what was a really difficult game to go to Brentford and win. It was a good result for us to get through in a cup. You know at the moment the supporters have got something to cheer about in the cups. We've got a couple of cup competitions to be looking forward to in the second half of the season, now we need to do the job in the league and get ourselves in a much healthier position than we're in at the moment.
I think we've got five games in January and four will have been away from home.
There's one at home. Very rarely do you get a level of away games that we've got right now. So, we've had a real bundle of games away from home and from that point of view, I think that hopefully, we can keep picking up the points away from home. We've got to pick up something if we can. And, hopefully, when we get back to London Stadium in the coming weeks, we will be able to show it.
I'm really pleased [to see] Séb Haller [back in action for Borussia Dortmund following treatment for testicular cancer].
Séb was a great lad. And I really enjoyed working with him. And you know, it was incredibly sad - he had done so well when he went to Ajax and he had just got his move to Germany.
So, I’m hoping he makes a full recovery. Alan Stubbs made a full recovery [when he had testicular cancer during my time at Everton] and was able to play over a really long career. So, I'm hoping Séb does the same.
