Moyes deserves fans' acclaim as he heads towards the exit door

WHAT will go down as the defining image of David Moyes’s West Ham reign?

- Malik Ouzia

Last season’s triumphant trip to Prague offers unsurprisingly fertile ground — the celebratory touchline run, the winners’ medal hung around the neck of his father, David Moyes Sr, the dressing-room Proclaimers jig.

Then again, so too has the London Stadium technical area on many a less joyous afternoon — the arms thrown skywards as Said Benrahma back-heels on the edge of his own box, the Kevin Nolan-backed outrage at a penalty not given, the disbelief as any one of several misfiring strikers chips straight into the goalkeeper’s arms.

But for contentedness, and for the peak of a relationship between the club’s supporters and ‘the Moyesiah’ that later took a complex turn, you must perhaps go back to April 14, 2022 and the famous, ruthless 3-0 win at Lyon.

The goals that night were, fittingly, scored by three of the most totemic figures of the Moyes era in Craig Dawson, Jarrod Bowen and Declan Rice, but it was the manager who left feeling the love.