West Ham are back in action this weekend with a trip to Kidderminster Harriers in the 4th Round of the FA Cup, and manager David Moyes has spoken of his determination to do well in the tournament and the optimism going into the second half of the season.

The match at Kidderminster has the hallmarks of a ‘proper’ FA cup tie, with the hosts to be fully up to pull of a huge upset and Moyes is expecting a thrilling match.

“This is what the FA Cup is all about,” said the boss. “I’ve seen lots of sides of it. I’ve been in winning teams and losing teams at different levels of the Cup competition.

“I’ve been knocked out early, I’ve got to a Cup final, so you never know how the Cup’s going to go. We’re looking forward to the game.

“I think if we were at the London Stadium, it’d be a much different situation to going away from home.

“Obviously the surroundings [at Aggborough Stadium] are not as big, the pitch will probably not be in as good a condition as you’d expect of a Premier League pitch, but everybody’s been brought up as footballers. We all started at a level, and you have to show that if you have to play at that level, you can perform.

“People have been telling me I was part of the Preston team who lost to Kidderminster Harriers in the FA Cup fourth round in 1994.

“I could hardly remember it, but once I looked back into it and thought about it, I think the only difference was that Kidderminster were doing really well in the Conference at the time and we were in the bottom tier of the leagues at Preston, so it maybe wasn’t as big a surprise as it’s made out.

“When non-league teams beat league sides, it’s always seen as a shock, so we have to make sure that isn’t the case here.”

This week there has been a somewhat cloud over the club as we failed to add any additions to the squad in January, however the boss is far more optimistic and has explained the situation which has irked many fans.

“There were nine Premier League clubs who didn’t bring any players in during the January transfer window,” stated the manager.

“For some reason, it’s been a much more difficult January window than others, but I have to say we wanted to add to the squad if we could do.

“We targeted players we thought could help us, but unfortunately we just couldn’t quite get them over the line. We did get close to deals, but for different reasons they didn’t quite happen.

“I want to be ambitious here at West Ham. I want to bring in good players, and add to what is a really good squad we’ve got at the moment. We’re building on it.

“If we’re talking about another striker, I didn’t necessarily want just back-up, I wanted real competition. I could have easily gone out and bought back-up, but what I wanted was real competition, people who could take other people’s jerseys and challenge them, and that’s what we tried to get.

“Sometimes, to get the players you actually want, you have to wait a little bit longer. We weren’t able to get them in this January window, but nine clubs didn’t do any business. We did try very hard, I have to say.

“I can only tell you the Board were terrific through the January window. They have been since I’ve been here. They’ve supported us greatly and made funds available, and we tried to use the supporters’ money and the Boards’ money the best we could.

“We just couldn’t get a couple of players we’d have really liked. I’d rather save the money than waste it.”

Finally Moyes touched on Alex Kral, who to date has struggled for game time since making his move to East London in the summer.

“Alex has maybe been a little but unfortunate to not feature more,” stated Moyes.

“He had COVID, which made it difficult for him as he missed out on a period where there were more games. I would like to try and get Alex some minutes and give him an opportunity to see what he can do.

“Alex is still getting used to the speed and the whole situation. We’ve said many times how long it can take some players to get used to Premier League football. Some players can come in immediately and others take a bit of time.

“I think Alex is just taking a little bit of time, but hopefully he’ll get some football the second half of the season.”