David Moyes was in no mood for excuses after West Ham drew with Burnley, but he did question the officiating.

After two successive wins, West Ham have failed to kick on in 2024. It took them two months to win a game this year and this awful form has continued on. While coming back from 2-0 is always nice, the Hammers should never have been in that position in the first place.

Unfortunately, their first-half display just was not good enough and manager David Moyes was happy to admit this. “I’m not making any excuses for the poor performance in the first half,” he told the official site. “Right from the start we looked as if we were going to play quite slow when we needed to play fast, hard and put them under pressure – and we didn’t do.”

“We had a disappointing first half and it was summed up by giving away an own-goal just on half-time to make it 2-0. We got back and had enough chances to win it, but it was a day when very few decisions went for us, that was for sure.”

Thankfully, whatever the Scotsman said at half-time clearly inspired the players as they came out looking like a different team. Lucas Paqueta managed to pull one back just a minute after the restart which kickstarted their comeback. 

“When we got the goal I thought ‘We have a good chance of going on and winning this now’. We could keep going for it, and we did do, but I thought we missed a lot of opportunities to score. From corner kicks and things getting blocked, we didn’t quite get it. But we got the goal [to level] and we had other opportunities [after that] as well.”

“We tried to put them under pressure as much as we could, but we gave up quite a few chances as well.We can’t be a team who are giving away two or three goals in a game, we have to be defending much better.”

“Obviously the boy [David Datro Fofana] scores a screamer for the first goal, but it looked as if we should have won the tackle, the ball then breaks and then he hits it into the top corner.”

Despite an awful start to life at the London Stadium, Danny Ings has been a reliable option since the turn of the year and he finally got his first goal of the season in the 91st minute against his former club. Understandably, Moyes was delighted for the striker and he hopes it can give him the confidence he needs.

“Unfortunately he’s not quite had his scoring boots on [this season], but today he did. He had one cut off for offside, he scores another, and then he hits the bar.”

“Hopefully that will give him a lot of confidence and it gives us more confidence as well, because we want to play Danny. We want to play him for his goals and what he can do.”

For the second time in three days, the Irons were denied a last minute penalty despite having a real shout for a handball. Like many fans, Moyes has been left baffled by what the rules actually are.

“The boy heads it and his two arms are in front of his head. I don’t know if he can head it anywhere else, so he heads it on to his arms and now we’re saying that’s okay. I think it’s bad technically [from the player] – I said the same in midweek as well, but we’re not getting the decisions for it so we have to move on and just leave it,” he stated.

“I know you have to jump with your arms but mainly they’d be down by your side. You wouldn’t jump and put your two hands in front of your forehead, because then you’re going to head the ball and it’s probably going to hit your hands then.”

Even with the circumstances, Moyes was still able to make a joke out of the situation, even if it was a snarky one. “Maybe it’s quite a good tactic, you head the ball against your hands, but I don’t know what they’re doing with it. I’m not going to solve handball with this answer either,” he concluded.