David Moyes was content to take a point after seeing his West Ham United side produce a subpar attacking performance in Saturday’s goalless draw at Fulham.
The Irons failed to score for just the fourth time in 23 Premier League matches this season and mustered just one shot on target at Craven Cottage, where they found Scott Parker’s relegation-threatened but improving hosts in determined form.
However, despite not playing well by their manager’s own admission, and seeing Michail Antonio substituted due to fatigue midway through the second half, the Hammers defended well enough to keep an eighth clean sheet of the campaign and collect a share of the spoils on a cold, wet evening in west London.
The major talking point of an otherwise underwhelming game came deep in added time, when Tomáš Souček won a free-kick but was then sent-off for violent conduct after appearing to catch Aleksandar Mitrović in the face with his left arm. The red card was shown after referee Mike Dean was asked to look at the incident again by VAR official Lee Mason, ultimately leading to a decision that the manager did not agree with.
We didn’t play well and I couldn’t put my finger on it because the players came into the game with really good confidence and I felt that we were in good shape leading into the game.
Maybe we have to give Fulham a bit of praise for the way they played. They are fighting for their lives and we’ve been in that situation ourselves and they made it hard for us tonight.
We showed a bit of resilience and stuck to it.
I don’t know if, at the start of the week I’d have taken four points but, when we got three [at Aston Villa], I wanted to come here and pick up another three.
We take what we can, we keep moving on and keep trying to pick up the points.
I don’t think it’s anything serious for Michail Antonio. I think he just felt as if he was beginning to fatigue.
[It wasn’t fatigue that was a reason for our performance], I just felt that our more creative players didn’t create tonight, whereas they did do in midweek.
We tried to keep ploughing away and we stuck at it, but our football wasn’t good tonight.
I didn’t like our football, but I’ll take the clean sheet and move on with that.
I thought it was a rubbish decision [to send Tomáš Souček off for alleged violent conduct against Aleksandar Mitrović].
I don’t really know what we can do because it’s a closed shop with these things and you find it very difficult to get anything back from the referees or anyone involved in it.
It was accidental, but I think players have got a responsibility to do the right thing as well, and quite often we’re seeing lots of them not, and that makes it hard for the referees.
It’s something that’s crept into the game (players going down after minimal contact from their opponents) and the only ones who can stop it are the referees by saying ‘no, get on with it, we’re not accepting that as being enough contact’ and if tonight is the level of contact you need to have to get a red card, my goodness we’re going to see an amazing amount of red cards.
