Moyes reveals half-time message that inspired West Ham comeback

David Moyes admitted he finds it hard to use the word “proud” as a football manager, but the West Ham boss made an exception for their comeback against Tottenham.

Barely 15 minutes of the game had gone when West Ham found themselves 3-0 down against their London rivals. However, Moyes’ men scored three of their own in an even shorter space of time just before full-time, with Manuel Lanzini clinching an equaliser with a spectacular effort in stoppage time.

It prompted huge celebrations from Moyes and his players, and the Hammers boss admitted after the game that it had been a moment to savour.

He told BBC Sport: “Very good, it is one of these moments you don’t often get in football. At one point you’re saying, ‘how bad can this get?’

“I hadn’t thought we played badly in the first half, that’s what I said at half time, sometimes you feel you have to do something – we didn’t, we made changes later on and they certainly made a big difference.

“The plan was not to go 4-0 down, we said if we got one, we would see what happened. It is a growing confidence we have at West Ham at the moment, we missed some chances today.

“A really good performance from the players got us back into it. We thought we played really well, the football was good, we threatened them.

“We are playing against a team everyone is talking about and after 10 minutes I was thinking, ‘is this going to be six or seven?’, we changed and it made us better.

“I have just seen my celebration… David Pleat moment came to mind. I know someone else who has run and slid down the touchline, so I wasn’t going to copy that.

“You get a lot of downs in football when you are working hard and trying to attain the top level, so you have good moments but a lot of bad too. Today was a great moment.

“Since we came back from lockdown we’ve been a completely different team. We keep scoring goals, but need to get back to clean sheets.”

‘Half-time team talk was difficult’

Speaking to Sky Sports, Moyes also gave more of an insight into how he inspired his players when they were three goals down at half-time.

He said: “The team talk was really difficult at half-time. We were 3-0 down but played well, apart from the first 10 minutes. I didn’t think we needed to change anything.

“They got the first goal and we had a chance to make it 1-1 and from that they made it 2-0.


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“Harry Kane was incredible today. So good. Up close he is a terrific player.

“We done what we done in the first half in the second. We thought we played really well. The defending we didn’t like but our play was very good. In the end we got some goals from it.

“As a manager at times it is hard to use the word proud, but tonight was a really proud moment to be manager of the team because of how they kept at it. It is a big result. Hopefully the supporters will have enjoyed it.”

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