David Moyes has managed more than 1,000 matches during his 30-year career, but few will have had two halves more contrasting than Sunday’s 2-2 Premier League draw between his West Ham United and Burnley.
The Hammers were nowhere near their best in the opening 45 minutes, falling two goals behind to the division’s bottom club and failing to muster much more than a couple of half-chances of their own.
The second period was totally different, with the Irons scoring twice without reply, creating 18 goal attempts – to just four in the first half – and hitting the woodwork on two occasions as they laid siege to the Burnley goal.
Moyes made two substitutions at half-time, introducing Michail Antonio and Edson Álvarez, and Lucas Paquetá had pulled a goal back within 30 seconds.
The Scot then added Danny Ings to the fray with nine minutes to play and the England striker could conceivably have scored a hat-trick in his short but hugely effective time on the pitch, first seeing a goal with his first touch ruled out for offside against Antonio on a VAR review, then equalising with a trademark touch and finish, and finally curling a well-struck shot against the crossbar.
Even then, there was time for West Ham to see a penalty appeal turned down when Sander Berge headed a clearance onto his own raised arm.
And, despite their huge improvement in the second period, the Hammers were indebted to goalkeeper Alphonse Areola, who made a vital late save to deny Josh Brownhill a last-gasp winner for Vincent Kompany’s Clarets.
There were talking points galore, but now the manager must refocus his own mind, and those of his staff and players, to Thursday’s massive UEFA Europa League round of 16 second leg tie with SC Freiburg under the lights at London Stadium…
I’m not making any excuses for the poor performance in the first half.
We’ve done a lot of Thursday-Sunday football in the past three years, but we never really got to the speed of it.
Right from the start we looked as if we were going to play quite slow when we needed to play fast, hard and put them under pressure – and we didn’t do.
We had a disappointing first half and it was summed up by giving away an own-goal just on half-time to make it 2-0.
We got back and had enough chances to win it, but it was a day when very few decisions went for us, that was for sure.
We needed to get an early goal in the second half.
When we got the goal I thought ‘We have a good chance of going on and winning this now’. We could keep going for it, and we did do, but I thought we missed a lot of opportunities to score.
From corner kicks and things getting blocked, we didn’t quite get it. But we got the goal [to level] and we had other opportunities [after that] as well.
We tried to put them under pressure as much as we could, but we gave up quite a few chances as well.
We can’t be a team who are giving away two or three goals in a game, we have to be defending much better.
Obviously the boy [David Datro Fofana] scores a screamer for the first goal, but it looked as if we should have won the tackle, the ball then breaks and then he hits it into the top corner.
It’s the sort of game when we’re on top and making chances, then Danny over his career has been brilliant at it.
Unfortunately he’s not quite had his scoring boots on [this season], but today he did. He had one cut off for offside, he scores another, and then he hits the bar.
Hopefully that will give him a lot of confidence and it gives us more confidence as well, because we want to play Danny.
We want to play him for his goals and what he can do.
I don’t know what we’re doing with handball.
The boy heads it and his two arms are in front of his head. I don’t know if he can head it anywhere else, so he heads it on to his arms and now we’re saying that’s okay.
I think it’s bad technically [from the player] – I said the same in midweek as well, but we’re not getting the decisions for it so we have to move on and just leave it.
It used to be down the referee’s judgement and, did you mean it or did you not. You would say, ‘What are you doing with your arms out there?’ Today’s one, I wouldn’t say the boy meant it with his arms out there, but technically I don’t know why your arms are in front of your face.
I know you have to jump with your arms but mainly they’d be down by your side. You wouldn’t jump and put your two hands in front of your forehead, because then you’re going to head the ball and it’s probably going to hit your hands then.
Maybe it’s quite a good tactic, you head the ball against your hands, but I don’t know what they’re doing with it. I’m not going to solve handball with this answer either.
We’ll do everything we can on Thursday to get through.
We just need to do as well as we have done for the last two years in Europe. We’ve only been in this situation once, against Seville, and I think everyone knows what we have to do.
We certainly know what we have to do and hopefully the crowd know what part they have to play as well.
