West Ham United manager David Moyes relished the team's "special" achievement after they booked a second consecutive European tour by reaching the Europa Conference League group stage on Thursday.
The Hammers defeated Danish side Viborg 3-0 in Thursday's qualifying playoff second leg, winning 6-1 on aggregate to reach the group stage of the third-tier European competition. "It is a special thing being in Europe and what makes it really special is that you don't get it very often," said Moyes, whose team reached the semi-finals of the second-tier Europa League last season. "You can sometimes find people who treat it with a bit of disrespect, but I wanted to make sure we treat it with great respect because I want us to try and do well and compete it in. "Now we've got another period of European football and playing games in places we've maybe not done before, so we look forward to it." Moyes said that new signing Gianluca Scamacca, who joined the London club from Sassuolo, could soon be ready to start in their Premier League games after he scored a goal in both legs of the playoffs. "He scored two goals for us in two (European) games, so he's certainly getting a lot closer to being ready to play (from the start in the Premier League) now," Moyes said. "We can't be expecting too much from him, too soon.
We need to give him a chance to get ready, but he certainly did a great job for us." West Ham, who are bottom of the league after three games, play at Aston Villa on Sunday.