West Ham Win Over Sevilla Guarantees Moyes' Immortalised Status In East London

The Hammers booked their place in the Europa League quarter-finals with victory over serial-winners Sevilla
13:35, 18 Mar 2022

March 17 2022 began as St.Patrick’s day and ended as St.David’s.

It is the only way to properly define the outlandish victory over Sevilla that guarantees West Ham manager David Moyes’ immortalised status in the East End of London. 

Built on the gritty Glaswegian’s core values of rock solid defence and sheer brute force it catapulted the unfancied Irons into the quarter finals of the Europa League at the expense of serial winners and slick Spanish stylists Sevilla. 

Moyes was true to his nature and played it down, rightfully pointing out that you don’t earn a trophy for getting to the last eight of any tournament. 

Yet the symbolism for him and the club he is transforming is worth its weight in gold - forget silverware for now. 

Fighting back from a goal down in the first leg to win 2-1 on aggregate is largely unheard of at this peculiar club.  

The self-proclaimed ‘West Ham way’ was about swaggering football on the good days and losing at home to Grimsby in the FA Cup on the bad ones. And there have been a lot of bad ones.

A club with a tarnished reputation and a grumpy working-class, post-industrial fanbase. It’s as if Moyes and West Ham were made for each other.

This man has been on the longest upward journey back to credibility in history, since the day after he left Everton in June 2013.

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Whether he was out of his depth or simply hounded out at Manchester United is a matter of opinion but he got burned by it and that’s a fact.

Debatable experiences at Real Sociedad and Sunderland were like rebound loves after his reign at Everton. 

It was only when he found a club in a dingy corner of London that he was able to feel himself again.  

West Ham is a club that has struggled to know itself over the years, particularly after the arrival of owners David Sullivan, his business partner David Gold and arch-whip hand Karren Brady in 2010.

Forever looking upwards but taking several steps backwards with huge unrest over a move to a vacuous new stadium three miles away from beloved Upton Park, a non-existing strategy when it came to transfers and a cluster of agents and confidants running the show when it needed an old-school football man to take charge.

They have finally got that in Moyes, who rarely lavishes praise, who understands what ordinary fans want to see from their players but more importantly he knows the danger of over-promising.

That has always been West Ham’s biggest fault. The fans will tell you their club won the World Cup in 1966 for England because of the Bobby Moore, Geoff Hurst and Martin Peters trio of stars.  

Never ones to shy away from bragging and brashness, the club brought out a celebration china mug when it beat Manchester United’s third team 4-0 in the League Cup. 

The tumultuous win over serial Europa League winners Sevilla on Thursday at a packed and raucous London Stadium epitomises how far he has brought the club along in his second spell as manager.

Recruitment is now sensible, not performed on a whim depending on which agent happens to be flavour of the month with the chairman.

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Kids are coming through from the famous academy - a tradition West Ham was famous for but which fell away starkly.

Right back Ben Johnson, who played 90 minutes against Seville, is a prime example. The coaching staff weren’t too sure about this lad not so long ago yet he is flourishing under the tough love of Moyes and is now competent at Premier League level. 

Declan Rice, a midfielder plucked from Chelsea’s scrapheap at 14, is now effectively the captain and will officially be when Mark Noble leaves at the end of the season. 

Moyes slapping a £120 million price tag on a boy who could walk into any team in England, is a signal that West Ham have stopped handing over their prized assets cheaply the way they did years back with Joe Cole, Frank Lampard, Rio Ferdinand and Michael Carrick.

All in all West Ham have stopped embarrassing themselves under Moyes. He has bought wisely and cautiously, refused to pander to egos, has instilled his trademark granite defensive-first approach and made it work. 

Sixty thousand Cockneys brought up on feeble dreams of glory and more normal failure cheered him to the rafters for it last night - something that seemed impossible when he took over for the first time in November 2017 when West Ham were deep in traditional relegation trouble. 

Only recently, the club has resurrected a statue of Moore, Hurst and Peters outside the vast concrete bowl in Stratford that is their new home and which on Thursday night received its first layer of history.

Giddy West Ham fans might be calling for one of Moyes to be placed alongside it soon.

Although it wasn’t all good news this week. The excitement ahead of West Ham’s biggest home match for years meant that some places ran out of pie and mash long before kick off.

Although as a Glaswegian, Moyes will have no appreciation of what a disastrous event that is in E15.

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