David Moyes demands Man Utd answers from Premier League as West Ham top four hopes fade

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David Moyes has demanded clarity from the Premier League as to why Manchester United are having to face three games in five days. United manager Ole Gunnar Solskjaer will have to field weakened teams – but two of the games are against Leicester and Liverpool, rivals of West Ham for the remaining European places.

But the Hammers boss is worried it could affect the integrity of the rest of the competition, after United beat Aston Villa 3-1 on Sunday with a full-strength team but now face having to make wholesale changes against Leicester on Tuesday before entertaining rivals Liverpool two days later.

“Ole can do what he likes, because it is his team and his club. But I don’t know if there was a better way to sort the fixtures out,” Moyes said after his side lost 1-0 to West Ham.

“It was really interesting that when we were coming back from the pandemic and we were third from bottom there was an awful lot of integrity required to get the league back up and going. We thought that was the right way to go.

“Maybe we should know what the choices are? But the Premier League have made that decision and there is nothing I can do about it.

“The Premier League should be answering these questions and telling us exactly why it’s the case.

“We hope it’s not [going to affect the integrity] because we have been through a very difficult 18 months and everybody has tried to do everything the best they can.”

Everton manager Carlo Ancelotti was more relaxed.

“Honestly, I don’t care what the other teams do,” he said. “The competitiveness of the Premier League is top and it will still be a difficult game is some players have to rest. It is not going to be a problem.”

Dominic Calvert-Lewin urged his Everton team-mates to “keep believing” after he fired them to within a point of seventh-placed Tottenham with a game in hand.

His goal was enough for all three points at the London Stadium on Sunday afternoon.

“Every game is getting more important from now until the end of the season, so we simply have to keep believing and go into every game trying to win,” Calvert-Lewin said.

“We dug in. It wasn’t pretty but for the effort we put in we deserved it. It was about determination, hard work, sticking together, and that’s what got us the three points.”

West Ham boss Moyes accepts that the Champions League itself may be beyond the Hammers but does not expect the disappointment to lead to them missing out on Europe altogether.

“We’ve been shooting for the stars and we will continue to try for that but if we don’t quite make it whatever we get next is a good result and the players have been terrific,” he said.

“I can see that I’m feeling disappointed because I wanted to go for the big one.

“But the biggest compliment I can give the players is that they’ve been competitive in every game, they’ve given it a go and we will try to do that in the remaining three games as well.”

West Ham 0-1 Everton match report

West Ham’s Champions League dreams faded and died into a sorry, soapy mess against David Moyes’ old side.

Ultimately, without Mark Noble and Declan Rice in the side, they were just not bubbly enough to bounce back from Calvert-Lewin’s early goal. The Toffees were just impossible to shift.

Now with five points to make up on Leicester in just three games – and others queueing up to board – it seems the gravy train will not be taking advantage of the superb rail network hub which was part of the reason the owners moved the club to Stratford in the first place.

Less glamorous, of course, are the journeys to the further reaches of the continent that tend to be involved in Europe’s lesser competitions, and Moyes’ big concern having fought such a remarkable campaign is that they miss out on the experience altogether.

The problem is that Everton are right up there in contention again to try to oust one of Liverpool or Tottenham out of Europe completely.

It looks like being the one remaining intriguing battle in the Premier League. That said, it took a long while for this encounter really to get going.

The opening goal was a demonstration of understated simplicity. Calvert-Lewin just ghosted past Craig Dawson onto Ben Godfrey’s neat but unremarkable pass, set himself and picked a spot beyond Lukasz Fabianski in the far corner.

The West Ham goalkeeper did well to push away a Gylfi Sigurdsson free-kick from the top corner and keep West Ham in the game.

Everton were being allowed far too much time to settle on the ball and playing much the better football – very much a return to form after just one win in their last eight games.

Manuel Lanzini went off before the break and even the impressive Tomas Soucek was being swamped on his own – it seems Rice in particular cannot get fit again quickly enough.

Jesse Lingard was not shining as brightly as he has done and Michail Antonio lacked his usual presence – with their three centre-backs working so cohesively, West Ham were barely allowed to get close.

The one chance the home side had to level the scores before the break was headed over the bar by Said Benrahma, He was picked out by Pablo Fornals, but his elaborate swallow dive gave the ball too much momentum as he tried to lift it over Jordan Pickford.

West Ham were better in the second half and on a different day, a different season, Vladimir Coufal’s shot would not have bounced off the inside of the post, hit Jarrod Bowen and fallen perfectly into the arms of the relieved England goalkeeper shortly after the hour mark.

By the same token, a Joshua King header with his first touch after coming on might have crept in on the counter-attack inside of also hitting the woodwork.

An Everton win was an entirely fair result and although the match felt very much an end-of-season affair, a glance at that table says there is a still a long way to go.

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