West Ham fans have been overjoyed with their start to the season.
They sit 7th in the Premier League and have only lost twice, which were against Manchester City and Liverpool. In contrast, Sheffield United sit dead-bottom of the table with just one point to their name and, to add insult to injury, lost their last game 8-0 to Newcastle United.
Despite the Blades’ poor start, David Moyes has said that it is “going to be tough” to take all three points, especially after such a heavy defeat.
Preparing for a difficult game
Since the Tevez saga, there has always been a bit of an edge to any meeting between the two sides. Mix this with the bitterness of an 8-0 defeat at home in their recent outing gives all the more reason for West Ham to worry.
“Sheffield United had a poor result last week,” Moyes said.
"But they’ve done really well to get promoted from the Championship. Their manager Paul Heckingbottom has done an incredible job and I see them as a really tough game.
“It could be a one-off last week, and we’re the next game against them and that’s going to be tough.”
The Scotsman continued to say how the east London side will need to be on top of their game all over the pitch to secure all three points.
“We’ll need to be at our best against them, play well and show our qualities defensively," he confessed.
"We will also need to show good qualities on the ball and, if we’re going to win the game, we will need to show we can score goals as well.”
Seen it all before
This weekend’s match marks the veteran manager’s 900th league game and, therefore, he has had plenty of experience in how hard it is to play against a team who just suffered a heavy defeat.
“You would always expect a team who loses to have a reaction of some sort. I wouldn’t ever see [having to play a team in that situation] as a good thing.
“I wouldn’t want to be on the other side when you’ve lost like that and have to get ready to go again. It’s not an easy thing to do.”
“I’ve had heavy defeats in my career. Every manager has to. It’s part of it.”
Kicking on from an excellent start
Even though they have suffered defeat in their last two Premier League games, there has been plenty of positive to take from those two games and it is hard to imagine that anyone would be overly disappointed with losing against Man City and Liverpool.
“I thought there were a lot of things that we could take from the game at Anfield. Overall, there were lots of good things from the game.“
One player that has been key to the Hammers’ immense start to the season is their European hero Jarrod Bowen. He has scored in all four away games in the Premier League this season and has proven how vital he is to his side and David Moyes was full of praise for him.
“Jarrod is beginning to become a player whose consistency and his stability within the team is ever so good. He goes from strength to strength, continues to improve and hopefully he will keep scoring goals and making goals.“
As everyone at the club has been very open about, West Ham’s form domestically last season simply was not good enough. For much of the season they were fighting relegation, but their Conference League triumph made this negligible and the manager has put their success so far down to winning the competition.
“You have to remember we started the season after winning a European competition in our last game, so we came into it with a real positivity.”
”We’re in good form. The players have started well, the new signings have helped, so let’s hope that we can continue.”
Considering the games that they have had already, the Cockney boys have set themselves up in a great position to fight for Europe again this season.
It is absolutely critical that they capitalise on this opportunity by beating the teams in the bottom half of the table but, as Moyes made clear, Sheffield United certainly will not make the same mistakes as they did last time out.