David Moyes: I would like to stay at West Ham... but only if we can agree common goals

EXCLUSIVE COLUMN
West Ham secured their Premier League status with victory over Leicester City last weekend
EPA/Kieran Galvin
David Moyes10 May 2018

We’ve done what we set out to do, keep this great football club in the Premier League but I won’t be walking around the pitch at the London Stadium on Sunday celebrating avoiding relegation. I want to aim higher - much higher.

My short-term contract expires very soon. If we can agree common goals at the end of this season I would like to stay at West Ham as I do believe we are on the right road.

In football management, the first few months are often the toughest. Sometimes you need to straighten things out, take a hard line and people don’t quite like it.

You are trying - quickly - to evolve the squad, to improve players, to make things better.

I think we’ve come through a big chunk of that process now.

I have to say I have really enjoyed this job. Everyone has made me welcome and in my eyes we’ve had very little negativity from within because we’ve always tried to keep things going.

We’ve tried to be honest and straightforward with the supporters and everyone around the club.

There were disciplinary issues which needed to be sorted and more will need to be ironed out given time.

People within the club were looking for those things to be sorted, as were the supporters who watched the team. Whether it was timekeeping, players wearing suits, making club appearances or something even more fundamental, they had to be addressed.

In Pictures | Leicester City vs West Ham | 05/05/2018

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We tried to get into that as quickly as we could but the only real focus was to keep this club in the Premier League.

We said we are only here for a short time at the moment, so let’s work hard and do the job as best we can.

One of the comments when we arrived was that the organisation needed improving. I was never going to criticise Slaven Bilic because he is a good man and a very good manager but I do remember saying to the players: “Don’t be coming back to me and complaining that we’re working you too hard on organisation.”

The players responded well and it’s my belief that they want structure, they want to be told what to do.

When we came last November, the team were in the bottom three so we didn’t have a great deal of time.

My first match was away at Watford. We lost 2-0, it was a poor performance and I must admit I had expected more. It was a bigger challenge than I thought and we were a bit surprised at where the group was.

More importantly, though, there was an imbalance about the squad. So many of the squad wanted to play off the left side. Attempting a better balance to the team was one of our first priorities.

We were also carrying a lot of strikers — Andy Carroll, Chicharito, Andre Ayew and Diafra Sakho. It’s not that easy to have that many front men because you can’t play them all.

With Marko Arnautovic, I watched him play at Watford in that first game. We had told him that he needed to do the running but he ended up playing the game at right-back.

I just thought that, at the stage of his career where he is now, it didn’t suit him. It’s his blistering power and pace which we needed to utilise and he has certainly demonstrated that over the past months. He gives us something different. Andy and Chicharito have varying strengths but we needed another player who could do lots of jobs and help us get up the pitch.

Those were the main changes and they proved the catalyst for getting us up and running.

Despite that I felt before I came in that the squad was good enough to avoid relegation. If I hadn’t felt that way, I wouldn’t have taken the job.

I also thought that, if we needed to try and spend money in January, then the club would have that capacity.

I do believe, though, that the confidence we got from beating Chelsea and drawing with Arsenal, both at home, was important, because things hadn’t been going all that well at the London Stadium up to then and the quicker we changed that and used our home in a positive way, the better.

The lowest point? The Burnley defeat, with all that went on, was one of them but the FA Cup defeat at Wigan was, for me, worse because I wanted to do well in the competition.

However, we went there with a depleted squad because of injuries and then lost Pedro Obiang for the season through injury and Arthur Masuaku, who collected a six-game ban which went on for almost two-and-a-half months.

We came through it and I want to thank everyone at the club and the supporters, for playing their part.

Tonight we have a tough job on our hands against Manchester United.

I would have preferred it if they were not coming off a defeat but I’m looking to pick up more points in these last two games and move further up the table.

The fee for this week’s column is going to the British Red Cross. For details, go to redcross.org.uk

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