David Moyes has urged his West Ham side to learn the lessons of last season’s Europa League semi-final implosion, but warned: “I don’t want vanilla players”.
The Hammers are looking to reach a second successive European semi-final as they take on Belgian side Gent in Thursday’s Europa Conference League quarter-final first leg.
Last year’s superb run came to an anti-climatic end against Eintracht Frankfurt in the semi-final, with Moyes’s side conceding inside the first 60 seconds of a 2-1 defeat at home and then seeing any hopes of a turnaround evaporate with Aaron Cresswell’s red card early in the second leg.
The Irons’ meltdown was compounded when Moyes was himself sent off late on for kicking a ball towards a ballboy, while Declan Rice was subsequently banned for accusing a match official of corruption in the tunnel.
Speaking at Gent’s Ghelamco Arena, Moyes suggested his players would be better prepared to keep their cool this time around, but insisted that must not come at the expense of any intensity.
“When I look back I want to learn,” Moyes said of last season’s debacle. “I said after that game we need to learn from the mistakes. A couple of us, me included, made mistakes, and got caught up and we were probably a goal down in the first leg before the game had even started.
“Emotions are something you never know what's going to happen. Looking back I can understand it, we were right up against it on occasions, but we've got to make sure we are better disciplined, calmer.
“But we still want the players to be emotional, we want them to understand what it means, we want them to be motivated and eager to impress. We don’t want vanilla players who are going to go around and not tackle, challenge, run hard, be competitive.”
The Hammers travel to Belgium having eased fears of relegation from the Premier League with Saturday’s 1-0 win over Fulham, which lifts the club to 13th, three points clear of the drop zone with a game in hand.
“It's really difficult,” Moyes said, of having to juggle a relegation scrap with the Hammers’ quest for European glory. “If you look at all the teams who play on a Thursday, it's very hard to get a result on the Sunday.
"It's been a difficult balancing act but I hope we're in this position for another few games. What do you do? You take the next game, focus on it completely, do everything you can to win it, and then go to the next one.”
