David Moyes has called on West Ham’s new signings to adapt quickly to the demands of the Premier League following the Hammers’ defeat to Brighton.
Moyes’ side suffered their third defeat on the bounce to start their 2022/23 Premier League campaign on Sunday, losing 2-0 to Brighton at the London Stadium. Recent recruit Thilo Kehrer was at fault for the first goal of the game, conceding a penalty in the 22nd minute, while other signings Gianluca Scamacca and Maxwel Cornet both started the game on the bench.
Speaking after the defeat, Moyes addressed calls to start more of his summer signings, stating that the players need to adapt to the league before they can get more game-time:
“I think it’s how quickly the new players integrate into the training and get used to it. If they don’t get used to the Premier League quickly then we have to keep going with players we’ve had, which at the moment looks like we could do with some freshening ourselves up.
“If they integrate very quickly and they can make an impact in the Premier League, then we will get them in right away. At the moment, we are seeing flashes of it, I’m not seeing wholehearted things to make me go ‘yes, they are ready to start.’
“I probably wouldn’t have started Thilo if I felt as if we’d maybe been in a better place and maybe if I had some other centre halves available, I wouldn’t have started him.”
Moyes also gave a general assessment of the game itself, stating that the penalty that Kehrer gave away was a ‘turning point’.
“I’m disappointed because we didn’t win,” he said. “We did ok but we gave away a couple of really poor goals. The penalty was the turning point, we started ok and contained them a little bit but we lacked that bit of quality and we didn’t keep the ball when we won it. We hadn’t done badly up till then.
“The same situation happened in the second half as well. We got ourselves back in the game and looked threatening but the second goal was a killer and we were punished. Brighton are a good team. I did think we had done better in some parts today against them that we had in the past but it doesn’t show in the result.”
