West Ham United manager David Moyes commended Aston Villa's performance after beating his Hammers side 4-1 at Villa Park in the Premier League on Sunday.
Defensive errors led to West Ham conceding the opening two goals of the contest, both scored by Villa midfielder Douglas Luiz including a second-half penalty, before Jarrod Bowen restored hope for the visitors with a deflected strike just before the hour mark.
However, a loose touch in midfield enabled Villa to break on the counter-attack and eventually net a third through Ollie Watkins, before substitute Leon Bailey completed the statement victory for Unai Emery's men with a superb top-corner finish just before stoppage time.
West Ham initially made a bright start to the new Premier League season, winning three of their opening four games and conceding only four goals, but their form has since dipped and their defensive resilience has faded as they have lost three of their last five league matches, conceding 12 goals in the process.
Moyes felt that Aston Villa were "at a different level" compared to his Hammers side and the Scotsman has encouraged his team "to do better" in various aspects if they wish to challenge for the European places this term.
"I've no doubt that Aston Villa had better quality in the big moments than we did and if you look at how they've been playing in the last six months or so, they've got that," Moyes told whufc.com.
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"We're still trying to build a team. We've started the season well and had lots of good things said about us but I know because I am the one who sees us every day that there are lots of things we need to do better.
"Today was a game against a side who you maybe hope we'll be competing with, but they looked like they were at a different level than we were today.
"I'm most disappointed that we lost our being tough and hard to beat and play against and we let them score easy goals. That's not what my teams do.
"Our football is improving and some of our stuff is getting better, but we can't then let that be part of it and not defend hard enough, well enough or compact enough to make it hard for the opposition to score.
"I know because I am the one who sees us every day that there are lots of things we need to do better."
Moyes added: "We've got a difficult game in midweek but let's dust ourselves down from this one and get ourselves ready [for Olympiacos away].
"The Premier League is always going to be our bread and butter and they are the ones we have to focus on, but if we can do what we've done in the last two years and go as far as we can in European competition, that's our aim."
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Meanwhile, midfielder James Ward-Prowse believes that West Ham's defeat by Aston Villa was a "good realisation" of what is required to become a top-six club in the Premier League.
Speaking to BBC Sport, Ward-Prowse said: "This club wants to be in [the top six] of the table, challenging I think today is a good realisation of what it takes to be at that level.
"As long as we come away from this knowing what needs to be done to get in there, it will be a valuable day come the end of the season if we learn from it."
"I think it was an entertaining match for the neutral," Ward-Prowse added. "We had a few chances in the first half in certain moments and a few individual errors. We know collectively as team we can do a lot better than that.
"Just a bad day and one that we go away now and reflect on and become hard to beat again. It's in West Ham's DNA, that ability to not be beaten easily.
"There's so many games in the season. It's important that you don't dwell on it but we will have a good look at what went wrong and make sure we show a reaction in the next game.
West Ham, who have slipped to ninth in the Premier League table and five points behind Villa in fourth, will play host to Everton in their next top-flight fixture next Sunday.
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