David Moyes was delighted to see his West Ham United side secure their progress to the UEFA Europa Conference League knockout stages with a 2-1 victory over Anderlecht on Thursday night.
The Hammers had too much for their Belgian visitors as goals from Saïd Benrahma and Jarrod Bowen put them 2-0 up at the break, although a late Sebastiano Esposito penalty gave the shoreline a closer feel than Moyes would have wanted after a dominant first-half display.
Nevertheless, the Irons' fourth win from four Group B fixtures means they are guaranteed to finish in the top two, and now the manager has his sights set on securing top spot and direct progression to the round of 16.
Moyes also commented upon injuries that forced centre-backs Angelo Ogbonna and Craig Dawson off, with the hope that neither will keep the defenders out for an extended period...
Tonight was OK. I’m pleased we won and we did the job that was needed.
I thought we played well in good periods in the first half and I quite liked what we did, but we could have probably added another goal which would have made things a bit different.
I didn’t like the last 20 minutes. The changes we had to make probably didn’t work and weren’t so good tonight, whereas last week we brought three people on and it changed the game, so it shows how easily it can change.
I thought we played well in the first half when we pressed hard and we won the ball back.
I thought we scored two really good goals, one from the free-kick and the other from Jarrod, and I was just hoping we could have got a third, because I think a third would have made it a lot different.
Even in the opening part of the second half, I thought we were worthy, but we missed a couple of really good opportunities to get the third and put it to bed.
Then we found ourselves getting a bit sloppy and players running out of position and doing things they shouldn’t be doing in the last 15 or 20 minutes when we were really in control of the game, so we didn’t do as well in the last bit.
I do have a lot of respect for what Anderlecht are trying to do with blooding so many of their young players.
They’re a club which is always going to be a development club and they’ve had a great history in Europe over many years, as people will know.
It’s good. They’ve got some really good young players and Belgium itself as a country has developed a lot of good young players, so it’s always good to see clubs giving their players an opportunity.
Getting European football after Christmas is great and it was always the plan.
The plan is to win the group, but we were always saying that, first of all, let’s get European football after Christmas.
It looks like we’ve got a really big challenge with Silkeborg in the group, so we’ll have a tough game against them here and we’ve still got to go to Bucharest as well.
I think Angelo felt his hamstring. He felt it really early, in his first run.
He had a little bit of an incident with it in training a week or so ago, with some training we were doing, so obviously he’s someone who was coming back from really serious injury and we’re disappointed he had to miss a big part of tonight’s game. He’s making good progress, so let’s hope tonight’s injury isn’t too bad.
Daws had a dead leg anyway and I think he got another one tonight right in the same spot, so we took him off more as a precaution rather than anything else.
