David Moyes said his West Ham United team almost did enough to secure victory at AFC Bournemouth but were left wanting in their search for a second goal.
Jarrod Bowen’s sensational second-half strike had given the Irons the advantage in their 2023/24 Premier League opener at Vitality Stadium, but the Cherries bit back late on as Dominic Solanke capitalised on a deflected effort to get around Alphonse Areola and poke home.
An entertaining outing on the South Coast could have realistically seen either side take all three points, and manager Moyes could find plenty of positives in his team’s first competitive showing of the campaign.
Ever eager to get even better, though, the boss could also find points for his boys to build on, while also reserving praise for his team’s attitude and character over the 90 minutes.
I’m happy with bits of the performance against Bournemouth.
I’m not happy with all of it but hopefully we’ve still got a bit to go. There were bits where we played with a lower block, and we didn’t go pressing as much today as we have done in other games. But we got ourselves in front and I was hoping we would hang on there.
It looks like it was a real scruffy goal for them.
Their boy tries a half-shot, it hits Tomáš Souček’s heel and it bounces into the path of Solanke. Apart from that, we had coped with most things. They had one or two things, like hitting the bar, but we hit the post a couple of times as well.
The game was pretty tight and there was not much in it. I was just hoping we could hold on and keep the 1-0.
We didn’t necessarily get anything wrong, but I was hoping we would get some bits better.
I’m trying to get us to play better and I’m hoping that will come. We had a bit of the ball, we worked to try and play and we’re trying to get better in different situations. Some of it was very good.
We’re pleased we’ve come away to Bournemouth and done that because it’s never going to be easy, but last year we came here and won quite well, and today we needed to get that second goal. We had some periods of play where, if we’d got a goal, we’d probably have had the game wrapped up.
But while it didn’t, it meant that we were under the cosh. We didn’t look after the bell well enough when we got it, to stop them from getting their chance.
We’ve got two number one goalkeepers.
Łukasz Fabiański has been sensational for us in the time I’ve been here. The way he goes about his job is tremendous and everything he does is very, very good.
But the decision, on this occasion, was to give Alphonse the chance to stake a claim to the No1. If you don’t play well, then you’ve got somebody else breathing down your neck.
The big thing I’ve said about these lads all along is they’ve got character.
We can always go back and talk about what we’ve just done in winning the UEFA Europa Conference League but there is nothing short in those boys when it comes to their competitiveness, their attitude and commitment.
It is one thing our team will never, never get questioned about. And that is a really big positive for players when they’re always at it and always trying their best. They do the right things to be team players, and that’s what we want here at West Ham.
