03 December 2023 , 18:39
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David Moyes rued West Ham’s “terrible” concession and questioned his team’s lack of personality as they threw away two points.
Dinos Mavropanos’ awful back pass allowed Odsonne Edouard to earn Crystal Palace a draw at the London Stadium. But the Hammers manager was mostly disappointed by his team’s inability to build on Mohammed Kudus’ opening goal.
“It was a tough game for us,” Moyes said. “We scored a good goal early on that gave us something to hang on to but we didn’t perform well in the first half. We got a bit better in the second even though we conceded in that period.
“The biggest thing was we could never play with enough personality and get the atmosphere going. We needed to play better. It can be a bit ugly but to give away a goal the way we did was terrible, it really was.”
Moyes was also reluctant to use West Ham ’s Europa League visit to Serbia on Thursday night as an excuse, having also played Burnley away nine days ago.
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He made six changes to the side that defeated TSC Backa Topola 1-0, though captain Kurt Zouma was absent owing to a family matter that Moyes said West Ham "could not alter." West Ham face London rivals Tottenham on Thursday night in the second game of a hectic eight-part December.
“The travel this week was a difficult ask,” he added. “We didn’t get back to Stansted until 1pm on Friday. But we had six players who were fresh and didn’t play in midweek. Today we had a lot who had flu and illness and didn’t travel [to Serbia] and I thought them staying behind would help.
Palace snatched a draw at West Ham (PA)“We were playing safe a little bit. I wanted us to take more risks. I needed us to get the ball into the forward players, and they needed to run in behind more often. We didn’t even create enough set pieces. Mo was fantastic, probably the best attacking player on the pitch, but we didn't get it to him and around him enough."
On a positive note Jarrod Bowen returned to action following a knee injury sustained while on England duty last month and while Moyes admitted there was an element of rustiness about his performance, having not played for almost four weeks, the forward came through unscathed.