West Ham boss David Moyes has stated that his players deserve recognition for their efforts last week after gaining a win in Europe followed by a battling draw with Aston Villa in the Premier League.

There is certainly a feeling of an opportunity missed with our Hammers gaining only a point against Unai Emery’s side on Sunday, with West Ham looking the more dominant of the teams – although lacked the gutting edge to take all 3 points in the highly tense encounter at the London Stadium.

Moyes was understandably frustrated at the end of the match, although questions have been raised by many as to why the Scot opted to leave £35m summer signing Gianluca Scamacca on the bench, with West Ham desperately seeking a winner towards the tail end of the game.

“We thought that Maxi would run more off them than Gianluca would at the time,” Moyes said after the game, when explaining Max Cornets introduction over Scamacca. “I thought Gianluca would link the play up more, but I thought at that time in the end, we thought Maxi would be a better choice.”

The Hammers boss though was full of praise for his players, and feels they deserve a lot of credit for the work and effort shown this week, also highlighting the importance of our home form as we prepare for the next run of crucial league fixtures which will ultimately determine our fate in our fight for survival.

“I thought today’s performance merited really good support,” said Moyes, as reported by Football London. “The players came back from Thursday night, long flight back from Cyrpus, played there and went out and performed well today.

“We went a goal down and I didn’t think we really deserved to go a goal down, I don’t think we’d done an awful lot wrong in the opening period and we found ourselves a goal down. But the players showed a lot of character, stuck at it, everyone ran and was committed throughout the game. They deserve a lot of praise, the players, for what they’ve done, they’ve been away and they’ve got something out of today’s game. Just a bit more quality at the death might have just got us something more.

“We’ve got a lot of home games coming up. I think we’ve got nine games in April now and I think the majority of them are at home. If you look at our record, we’ve been away a lot as you all know.

“Let’s be fair, we had a great period at home I think it was until October, where we went seven games unbeaten or something like that. At home, we were pretty good. Then just before the World Cup, we had lost a couple on the bounce which ruined that sort of record really.

“But we’re back getting closer to what we were, we’re back at home, playing a bit better, got two draws and two wins out of the four games recently. Let’s hope that we can continue to build on it.”