Declan Rice spoke exclusively to the club’s official website, and shared the three things that David Moyes told the West Ham players during the first squad meeting he conducted.
The Hammers slipped inside the bottom three before Moyes’s first game in charge on New Year’s Day, but the east London outfit put in their best performance of the season, beating Bournemouth 4-0 at the London Stadium.
West Ham looked like a totally different side. They were slow and laboured under Manuel Pellegrini and the lack of pressing on display was quite astounding in the modern era.
That all seemed to change under Moyes.
The Hammers pressed relentlessly, but efficiently too.
And Rice told WHUFC.com the three specific messages that the Scot gave the players when he conducted his first team meeting after taking over from Pellegrini:
“He’s come in straight away and he’s set the record straight. He’s said that we’ve not been running hard enough, we’ve not been working hard enough, and we’ve let our standards drop, and he’s been on us from day one. The first meeting we had, he got us all together and he said ‘if you don’t run, you don’t play’.”
West Ham take on Gillingham in the FA Cup third round this evening.
Then the hard work really starts.
The Hammers face an incredibly tough run of Premier League games with Sheffield United away, Everton at home, Leicester City away and Liverpool at home all to come over the next 24 days.
And Moyes will have his work cut-out, if he is to guide his West Ham team back towards mid-table by the time that February rolls around.
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