David Moyes urges his players to prove they are worthy of wearing the West Ham shirt

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Jack Rosser @JackRosser_19 November 2017

David Moyes has called on his West Ham players to show him why they have the reputations they do after defeat in his first game in charge.

The Scot oversaw a listless showing at Watford, a performance in which none of his supposed big-name players showed up.

With a few key absentees, the burden fell on the likes of Winston Reid, Mark Noble, Manuel Lanzini and Andy Carroll to impress, and Moyes saw little fitting of a club aiming for the top half of the Premier League.

After chants from fans labelling them unfit to wear the shirt, Moyes called on his stars to prove why they have such big reputations.

“I thought it was a big job,” Moyes said when asked if he felt he had taken on a bigger task than first imagined.

“I think there was some players with big reputations [who] disappointed me a little bit. I thought ‘you’ll show me more and you’ll show me why you play in the team regularly’.

“But today was the first time I’d really had the chance to see them play, and I think they need to show that if that’s their reputation show me why you’ve got it.”

With the narrative going into his first game being that Moyes would make the Hammers fitter and tough to beat, he also admitted improvements are needed across every department before they host Leicester at London Stadium on Friday night.

“Everything, I thought we turned the ball over really cheaply," he continued. “I thought we defended okay but then we gave away cheap goals, the first goal we get bumped off the ball about three times, three half challenges and we don’t really deal with it.

“The second goal, you can maybe tidy this up, [Pablo] Zabaleta went in for a cross and before we know it they were inside and running at us on their inside left or right.

“I just thought we didn’t do well enough in probably all the departments at different times.”

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