- Manager says his players show too much inconsistency
- ‘I want the team to be harder and tougher’
David Moyes: ‘We cannot keep promising that we will finish in the high, high positions. We need to build the club.’
Photograph: Tim Keeton/AFP/Getty Images
David Moyes has warned that West Ham should beware failing to deliver on grand promises after spending another season fighting for Premier League survival.
West Ham, who are three points above the bottom three before Friday’s crucial home game against Watford, have fallen well short in their ambition of breaking into the elite since leaving Upton Park in 2016 and Moyes believes they must be prepared to build patiently if they stay up. The manager’s view is that starts with hard graft, warning that the club have too often been viewed as a soft touch by opposing sides.
“The key is for us is to make sure we are a Premier League club and see if we can continue that,” Moyes said. “Of all the things that I heard in lockdown the most interesting came from the Archbishop of York. He said: ‘Promise less and deliver more.’ That has to be a little bit of West Ham.
“We have to make sure we deliver. We cannot keep promising that we will finish in the high, high positions. We need to build the club. We suddenly can’t go from this position to way up the Premier League. I hope we can but we need to be careful that we don’t promise too much, which we can’t deliver.”
Moyes, who returned for a second stint at West Ham after replacing Manuel Pellegrini in December, faced Watford when he began his first spell in November 2017. Watford won 2-0 and Moyes was alarmed when Marko Arnautovic, who left West Ham last summer, went off with an injury.
“The biggest memory is that Marko Arnautovic came off with a sore finger,” he said. “I thought: ‘My goodness, what is this I have got here?’ I want to get away from a West Ham team that is soft. I want them to be harder and tougher as we are in a relegation battle.”
Moyes admitted he viewed West Ham as easy prey when he managed Everton, though he argued the current side are capable of mixing flair with grit. The former Manchester United and Sunderland manager was asked about the so-called West Ham Way – an idea supporters celebrate with chants of “West Ham United, we play on the floor” – and insisted he was committed to an expansive approach.
“We’ve got an awful lot of good football players,” Moyes said. “That is the way I am going and that is the way we tend to play. When I said ‘hard’ it was getting away from the inconsistent West Ham; the flaky West Ham. I want us to get away from being a team where you think you can roll them over and catch them on an off day. I want more consistency.”
