West Ham United boss seeks home comforts after double blow

The Hammers, beaten 4-1 at Aston Villa and then 2-1 by Olympiacos in Athens in the Europa League on Thursday night, have four of their next five matches at home.

They host Everton on Sunday, then Arsenal in the Carabao Cup quarter-final before facing Olympiacos in the return fixture and then welcoming Nottingham Forest to the London Stadium.

West Ham only arrived back from Greece in the early hours of Friday morning but Moyes was quickly facing the media again ahead of Everton’s visit.

“It does feel like an advantage. If you look at our start to the season, I was moaning a little bit because I thought we had a really unfair start to the season,” he said.

“We had three away from home in the first four games of the season, and even in the next batch of games, it kept us in a negative side regarding being away from home.

“Hopefully it will help us now having four of the next five at home. We’ve been good enough at home – we’ve had some tough games and we expect some more to come.”

Moyes managed Everton for 11 years under the stewardship of chairman Bill Kenwright, who died aged 78 this week, and he anticipates a tricky match despite their struggles on and off the pitch this season.

“Everton are a hard nut to crack,” he added.

“They’ve probably played a little bit better away from home this season, so we expect it to be a really tough game.

“I don’t see them getting turned over easily, I don’t see teams beating them easily – I see a resilient team who keep at it, and on their day they have players capable of scoring goals.

“We’ve just got ourselves back, we’ll get ourselves ready for Everton. Every Premier League game is difficult – Everton is a tough game – and we’ll approach it the same as we’d approach any other game.”

*copy from Press Association.