While West Ham United’s 2021/22 UEFA Europa League adventure did not end with the result David Moyes would have wanted; it did so in his side’s character.
The Irons bowed out in the most challenging of circumstances doing what they have done on the continent all season: going for it.
An early red card for Aaron Cresswell put the Hammers on the back foot as they sought to overturn a 2-1 semi-final deficit away at Eintracht Frankfurt, who scored soon after through Rafael Borré.
Trailing by two goals at half-time, one man down, Moyes’ men poured their disparate numbers forwards in the second half in search of a route back into the match.
The loose balls, the half-chances, the narrow margins didn’t fall for us. Not on this occasion. But we never stopped trying.
I’m really proud of the way we played with ten men tonight, more than anything.
A lot of teams would have crumbled and maybe ended up getting beaten by more. We kept right in the game the whole time.
If we’re being honest, we probably lost the tie in the first minute at the game at London Stadium, when we conceded a goal after 50 seconds, and since then we’ve been chasing the tie really.
I thought we started the game well enough.
I genuinely felt that we had a really good chance of beating them, I really did.
The sending-off completely changed the game, and meant we had to try and wait for the odd moment here and there, and hopefully we’d get them.
We had some. I’ve got to say we missed one or two opportunities tonight to score. We needed something and we just couldn’t get it to go for us.
I’m more disappointed that we missed the opportunity and we didn’t take some chances at London Stadium.
You think of Jarrod Bowen’s overhead kick against the underside of the bar… We had a sending-off tonight and I think over the two games, for some reason, a lot of things haven’t gone our way.
But maybe we have to learn a little bit more about officiating in Europe and different things. We’ve now had two sendings-off in games – one in the quarter-final as well, when we had to play 45 minutes with ten men.
Tonight, we had to play the best part of 75 minutes with ten, so the players are brilliant. How they’ve worked and their resilience to keep going… and actually, I thought they tried to take the game to Frankfurt and had chances.
We congratulate Eintracht Frankfurt and we step aside.
Of course we do [we want more of this] – we need it.
I think I’d hope to draw Eintracht Frankfurt again, I’ve got to be honest, because I think I’d like that.
I’ve got to say I feel really disappointed that I’ve not been able to see the supporters tonight. I’ve let them down myself getting sent-off, but overall, the players did such an incredible job.
I’m disappointed. I don’t feel much right now because I wanted to be in the final and I believed we could be, but we didn’t quite make it.