David Moyes has hit out at his critics after he coached his side to a remarkable win against Manchester United.

After the Hammers thrashing at Anfield, David Moyes was always going to need his team to put in a big performance against Manchester United to get the fans back on side. Well, it does not get much better than a 2-0 win just before Christmas.

Despite having a brilliant start to the season on paper, a growing number of fans have become tired of Moyes’ counter-attacking football, with them believing the Hammers should be playing more on the front foot with the players they have. However, the Scotsman is more than happy with how his side are doing this season.

“Thirty points for us at this point of the season is really top,” he said in his post match interview. “We’ve had a great start to the season. We did a good job today – we played two days ago and came back with a real disappointment, but we got players ready. We had some fresh to play, thank goodness we did, and we showed it in the second half.”

“We’ve got nine wins now and that’s a great total for us. We’ll try to kick on and hang in with the boys at the top, but it’s really difficult with what a lot of these clubs have got. But a great result today. I hope all the supporters enjoyed today and enjoy a couple of drinks tonight.”

Unusually, the veteran manager was quite happy to explain why his style of play is not to everyone’s liking, stating that sometimes there is no choice but to play more defensively. “There will be games, when you ask the players to play so many, that you won’t get full excitement and great entertainment. We didn’t mean to come and sit off them. They passed the ball out from the back quite well and sent us back.”

Even though he was not overly pleased with how his team played in the first half, he was overjoyed with the final score. “We didn’t quite work it out [before half-time],” Moyes confessed, “but we got much better in the second half.” 

“But hey, we did the job against Manchester United who for most of the season have been up around the top six or seven. It’s an opponent who if we can beat it’s a great result for us.”

Interestingly, the West Ham gaffer was keen to reinforce what he has achieved in 2023, before biting back at those fans who criticised him for the side he put out against Liverpool. 

“Of course we can think of clubs who will do better, but for us we’ve had a brilliant year. The players we’ve had, whether they’ve gone or whether it’s new ones we’ve brought in, we’ve had a fantastic year, with a trophy in the middle of it.”

“It looks like if you don’t quite give everyone what they want then you get criticism for it, but I don’t think we could have won today if we had played all the players in midweek.”

These are some very strong comments from Moyes. He clearly wants to make it known that he believes he is doing plenty to warrant a new contract. 

While he may be right about the effect it would have had on today’s game, the large majority of fans would rather have gone through to the semi-finals of the League cup than to have won today. 

Some will say the pressure is getting to him but, after being in the industry for so long, it comes across more as him backing up his comments about how this is as high as West Ham will go unless they get a big money take over.