West Ham Fan View: Three talking points from the Leicester draw

West Ham 1-1 Leicester. It was an improved performance in David Moyes’ second game in charge. Here are three talking points from the game…

Optimism going into next week

Given our extremely poor start to the season, Moyes had to make a big impression in his first game. We did lose last week but tonight’s performance has given us optimism going into a crucial week for the club.

READ MORE: West Ham Fan View: Three talking points from the Watford defeat

We face both Everton and Manchester City next week and we simply could not go into these games with another defeat. We all know what happened when we faced Manchester City last season and nobody in world football looks like beating them.

But Everton have struggled significantly this season and if we build on tonight’s performance, we do have a good chance of winning. Moyes deserves credit for taking risks tonight with his line-up and we have to see this once again against his former club next Wednesday.

Improvements are clear

Our defence is still very poor though it is clear that we are improving our performances under David Moyes. Yes, the results have not been great but there is a big difference, and that is hope. This is something that we have not felt often this season.

READ MORE: West Ham Fan View: Why Slaven Bilic had to go

One player who has significantly improved under Moyes is Marko Arnautovic. He looks like a completely different player to the one we saw perform under Slaven Bilic. Not only was he lively when attacking, delivering good balls into the box, but we also saw a good work rate when we had to defend. Arnautovic looks determined to prove his worth and tonight showed us the player that we thought we had signed. It was certainly his best performance in a West Ham shirt.

Old mistakes cost us

Slaven Bilic did take the majority of the blame for our poor defence when he was in charge. But we can’t ignore that many of our players have been extremely poor this season.

There has been a lack of desire all season and whilst that was not the case tonight, we made poor defensive errors and our quality in the final third meant that Andy Carroll struggled to have an impact. Many of our players have not been in a relegation fight previously and their response throughout the rest of the season will be interesting.