David Moyes saw his West Ham United team secure a place in the UEFA Europa Conference League round of 16 with a 1-0 Group B win over Silkeborg IF on Thursday at London Stadium.
Moyes' men were completely dominant in the opening half-hour, but had only Manuel Lanzini's 24th-minute penalty to show for it - awarded after goalkeeper Nicolai Larsen fouled Michail Antonio - as a number of well-worked openings came to nothing.
The same pattern continued after immediately after half-time, and Silkeborg belatedly came into things, with Anders Klynge and Søren Tengstedt forcing Alphonse Areola into smart saves to maintain West Ham's advantage and ensure top spot in Group B and direct passage to the round of 16 in March 2023.
The manager was pleased to see his team extend their perfect record in Group B to five wins out of five, make it seven out of seven in Europe this season, and eleven victories in the last 17 games in all competitions.
That’s five wins from five in Europe, and eleven wins out of 17 in all our games.
We’ve had a couple of draws and three defeats, so we’re on a pretty good run at the moment. Tonight was another pretty good performance but I’d still say we’re still needing the final bit to be a little bit better, to make my job feel a bit easier on the touchline. It would make the team feel a bit easier too, if we can get a couple more goals.
I thought we made a really good start.
I thought we should have been in front before we got the penalty. I thought we did a lot of good things with the ball and we’re improving. But, again, it’s the final bit.
We couldn’t make the final pass or the final cutback or the final cross, or when we did do it we didn’t get the finish correct. Those bits were the disappointing bits for me but there is no real disappointment, because we’ve won the group – won five out of five – and we’re really pleased with what this group of players has done.
Winning all the games in the group is not an easy thing to do.
We did really well in the Europa League group last season as well, and we’ve done well this year. It’s a great credit to the players because they were at it. It was another group of players that played tonight and there was a lot of good things to see.
I thought we deserved to win and I thought we did some really good things.
It was good to get some people back in the team.
It was good to get some boys who have not played some minutes. It was only two days turnaround from the game against Bournemouth and then we’re going again on Sunday, so I felt we had to alter it around a bit.
I was really pleased for Nayef.
It was a good game for him to play in. There wasn’t a great deal of contact and we had a lot of the ball, and he’s a comfortable footballer. The physical side and the fitness are still to come a bit, and he’s got to get used to the Premier League.
He needs a little bit of time to adapt and we’ll give him that. I thought he did really well to play the best part of 75 minutes tonight.
It’s pleasing to keep our home form going, and a big reason for that is our supporters.
We need the support. We need it loud and to be well supported because, over the last couple of years, some of the nights we’ve had here have been truly tremendous.
