David Moyes felt Sunday’s 3-1 defeat at Liverpool followed a similar pattern to his previous visits to Anfield with West Ham United.
Yet again the Scot’s side gave a decent enough account of themselves on Merseyside, but yet again they left with nothing to show for their efforts.
This time, the Irons created early chances that did not go in, then got themselves level through Jarrod Bowen’s superb diving head shortly before half-time, only for the momentum to be lost in the second half and the Reds to score two match-clinching goals in the final half-hour.
For Moyes, who has yet to taste victory at Anfield as a manager, including six visits with the Hammers, it was another frustrating afternoon, but one which also showed his team has the quality to mix it with the Premier League’s top sides.
I think we did a pretty good job.
Obviously I’m disappointed that we’ve lost, but when it was 2-1 we were certainly in the game.
We gave away a really bad second goal which put us under pressure. We had been under a bit of pressure but we played really well at times in the first half, created chances and scored a really good goal and we were worthy of the draw at half-time.
I thought we played well in the first half.
We passed the ball well, we did a lot of good things and Mick had a great chance and Tom had a chance and their ‘keeper made a great save, so we gave them a good game.
I wouldn’t say we gave them a better game than last year, because we played well then, but I thought we were unlucky to go behind.
The penalty kick was probably the first time we had anything to deal with, and even then it took a bit of a deflection into Salah’s path and we gave away a penalty kick.
I’m disappointed with all three goals.
Jarrod Bowen is scoring goals and he’s looking a really good player, as well.
He’s doing a lot of stuff and looking quite powerful and looking as if he wants to score, and we need are needing Jarrod to get the goals, like we did last year.
When you get the individual chances like we did today, you’ve got to find a way of taking them.
I’ve come here too many times and not got the result and quite often I come away saying we played quite well and were unlucky, and I’m getting a bit sick of saying it, but the truth is we’ve made a lot of strides, we are playing well, we feel good about the way we’re playing and I thought today’s performance had a lot of good stuff, maybe not so much defensively in the second half.
I believe we are looking much better and playing well.
But the truth is that to change games you need to take your moments and even in the games that we’ve won there has been very little between the teams and they’ve been very tight.
Maybe against Chelsea they missed a penalty and we scored and then we got a penalty ourselves late on to win 3-1, but the last two games even when we’ve been down 2-1 we’ve had chances and you can’t give away a third goal as easily as we did today.
We made changes to win it and took off a lot of our height and we knew we’d always be vulnerable [from set pieces] when we’ve done that.
