David Moyes was disappointed that West Ham extended their winless run in a “tight” loss to Nottingham Forest, however he is confident they can turn things around.

Another game, another loss for West Ham United. The Hammers have been in woeful form since the start of 2024, failing to win a game despite playing Bristol City twice and three teams who are fighting relegation. Their 2-0 loss to Nottingham Forest was yet another performance that lacked any sort of excitement. 

Despite being the first team to not score against Forest since November, manager David Moyes does not see it as a particularly bad defeat. He even went as far as to claim that the game was pretty even. 

“We’re obviously lacking a bit of balance in the team, but even if we were playing really well, coming to Nottingham Forest and losing isn’t a sin,” he claimed when speaking to WHUFC.com

“They’re fighting for their lives against relegation and they’re the team who are under pressure, not us, and they played today like a team who knew that they needed the points to avoid relegation, and it wasn’t too long ago that we were the team who were doing that.”

“It ended up being too easy [for the first goal] as they passed the ball into the box and we got turned and it was just too easy. It was a tight, close Premier League game between two teams. ‘Phonse made a couple of really good saves for us, we had a couple of good chances when we went through and didn’t finish them off, so it was a tight-ish game and there wasn’t much in the game at all.”

While factually the Scotsman’s claims do not really match the facts (Forest had nearly double the Hammer’s shots), he was certainly right in his criticism of the referee who made some baffling decisions throughout the affair. “It felt that the crowd played a huge part in a lot of the refereeing decisions today,” the veteran manager stated. “They got right behind their team just because Nottingham Forest being in a relegation-threatened position, they know they have to support their team and I think they had an affect on the referee and quite a few decisions as well.”

The last two games have turned a lot of fans against Moyes, but this poor run of form has been coming for a long time. To no surprise though, the gaffer was keen to back himself as he believes it is just a rough patch that his squad are going through.

“I said in another interview that it wasn’t too long ago that Newcastle were going through a really difficult period with injuries, Manchester United were going through a period, Manchester City before they went to the Club World Cup went through a difficult period and lost quite a few games, and Arsenal lost quite a few games over Christmas time, so it does happen, and we’re no different from anybody else.”

“In fact, we’re lesser than those other sides I’m talking about in many ways and we lost a few players – Jarrod was injured, Micky was injured, Paquetá, Mo – so we’ve had our share as well. We have to find a way of getting out of it and I’m sure we will.”