David Moyes wants West Ham United to learn from experience to eliminate AZ Alkmaar
West Ham boss David Moyes wants his team to learn from their experience of semi-final pain in the Europa League last season, to fire their bid to book a place in this season’s Europa Conference League final, as reported by Sky Sports.
The Scotsman feels that his team can be better and can improve, in order to see off the threat from AZ Alkmaar in the semi-final second leg in the Netherlands on Thursday evening.
The Hammers take a 2-1 lead into the decider thanks to goals from Said Benrahma and Michail Antonio at the London Stadium last week.
Moyes feels his team is much better equipped this time around, thanks to their exploits last season in overcoming the likes of Sevilla and Lyon, before they fell to eventual winners Eintracht Frankfurt.
“In the end, maybe a little bit of lack of experience of being at that level of the competition might have just took its toll on us,” he said.
“Hopefully, we can learn from it, get a little bit better and we’re all really hoping we can make another step and get to the final.
“The players are more experienced generally. You have to remember, West Ham hadn’t been in Europe for I don’t know how many years before last year.
“That was our first year and we navigated most of it in a good way. We’ve done very much the same this year, we’ve navigated very well to get to this point in the competition.”
Don’t hold back
The Irons need to guard against complacency against AZ on Thursday.
In last week’s first leg, they sat off their opponent too much resulting in a very limited impact on the game from the hosts as the Dutch side were able to dictate the play.
Their opener was the wake-up call required and as the second half got going, West Ham began to increase the intensity and ask more of their opponent.
Moyes’ men never looked back from the equaliser and ended up dominating the game.
A similar approach is required in Alkmaar, especially to exert the physical advantage over the Eredivsie team. West Ham’s pace and power proved to be too much and that has to be the way ahead to book a place in the Prague final.
Backed by a raucous home crowd, AZ will be up for it and aiming to score early. As long as the Hammers can avoid going behind early on, they are well-placed to get the job done.