David Moyes has a message for the West Ham owners after the boring Bournemouth win and calls for fan patience.
Winning is all that matters in football we are so often told. When you are fighting to stay up or challenging for titles never have truer words been spoken.
When you are a club somewhere in between – like West Ham are at the moment – sometimes it doesn’t quite tick all the boxes.
West Ham beat Bournemouth 2-0 last night and in doing so jumped seven places from 17th to 10th. The Hammers are in the top half for the first time this season as a result.
“A win’s a win” is how most West Ham fans will rationalise a game that was as dull as dishwater.
It certainly won’t be replayed on Sky Sports’ Premier League classics in the coming years. None of West Ham’s games this season will if Moyes continues to set up with three defensive midfielders at home to teams like Bournemouth.
Football fans spent most of Monday evening mocking what they were watching unfold and you can’t really blame them.
The thing is “a win’s a win” might not cut it for Moyes with the club’s supporters for much longer. And that will make the club’s owners sit up and take notice at some stage in the not too distant future unless the way the team plays improves dramatically.
The drab atmosphere in the London Stadium last night was like so many this season. Fans are bored of what they are seeing.
But West Ham supporters know football. They know that Moyes has had to oversee a massive turnover of players in his squad and that it will take time for things to knit together.
That is where the pressure is on Moyes; to get this team – newly furnished with eight players to the tune of £170m after an unprecedented transfer window – gelling and playing the kind of exciting, attacking football West Ham supporters want to see.
Moyes knows it too.
And he has admitted his side is not playing particularly well or dominating games as he would like. West Ham are missing the ‘details and combinations’ according to the manager.
The Scot knows the score. And his comments after the game were almost an acknowledgement that he knows he has to produce something a lot more exciting and enjoyable with the players he has been given.
David Moyes had a message for the West Ham owners after the boring Bournemouth win and called for fan patience.
“We’re doing ok but you can tell we’re a bit… not quite as smooth as we’d like to be,” Moyes told West Ham TV after the game.
“I think our build-up is getting better but we’re missing (Craig) Daws(on) and we’re missing Nayef (Aguerd) and we’re just seeing the best of (Lucas) Paqueta coming out and he gets an injury so we’re just finding our way and we’re having to change.
“It’s great that Flynn Downes has got in and done really well in the games but we’ve just not quite got that fluency and fluidity which maybe we’ve had for the last year or two.
“I’ve got to say a big thank you to the club. The club did a brilliant job in supplying me with what we needed. I was saying earlier in an ideal world you wouldn’t bring in eight or nine players, you’d probably try and maybe do three or four a year, maybe a couple of young boys or something along that line. But we’ve had to do it because of where we were.
“And also it’s partly because of our success we’ve had, we’re trying to raise the bar because we’ve grown with the players we had, we had to bring in new, international players, people who we felt could make a difference.
“So I’ve got to say a big credit to the club and the board for supporting us. Now what we need is a word called ‘time’ which sometimes you need just to let these players show exactly what they can do.”
This is Moyes saying ‘I know what I’ve got to do, I know the style has got to be better, just stick with me and we’ll get there’.
He has more than earned the right to ask that of the fans and owners.
But we may have to accept there will be many more dull nights like Bournemouth before it all clicks for this newly assembled West Ham side.
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