Aaron Cresswell was unhappy with a sub-par game by the Hammers against Fulham and made it clear that level of performance won’t to at Old Trafford on Tuesday.
David Moyes’ men were far below their usual standard at Craven Cottage and were forced into a 0-0 draw.
Despite creating a couple of great chances Fulham could find no cutting edge and the Hammers had just one shot on target apart from a Vladimir Coufal header which hit the bar.
Thankfully Cresswell and his defensive colleagues were in decent form and although Oggy gave away a couple of dangerous free kicks on the edge of the box and picked up a yellow card, we stood strong.
Cresswell was happy with another clean sheet but saw the Craven Cottage match as an opportunity missed for another three points.
“The positives to take from the game are the clean sheet and the point away from home,” he said.
“Ideally we’d have liked more, but I just feel that we didn’t get going throughout the game. We have to give Fulham some credit and I thought they played some good stuff.
“They played the right way and caused us some problems, especially in the first half. It’s a disappointing night from our point of view, but we’ll go again in the next few days.”
The team is more than aware they will have to up their game against Man Utd on Tuesday in the fifth round.
“We know we’ll have to play better at Manchester United,” he continued.
“It’s another tough game on the road and the games are coming thick and fast. We want to try and go as far as we can in the FA Cup so we’re looking forward to that one.”
Cresswell will hope Tomáš Souček is available for that match after the Czech midfielder was controversially sent-off at Craven Cottage.
The left-back said the contact Souček made with Aleksandar Mitrović was purely accidental and he believes the decision should be overturned.
“I’ve watched it back and I don’t understand what they’ve seen,” he added.
“Everybody who knows Tomáš knows he’s not that type of person, far from it, and even Mitrović has said he hardly touched him.
“He’s not even looking towards Mitrović so it’s clearly frustrating and hopefully the appeal will go in and get that overturned.”
Think this game calls for a back 5 again – our first team are tired and continuous games every few days is injury making. We seem to play more measured football in that formation too, not trying too get it forward too quickly. Hopefully we can pull it off.
Sadly we gave the game up and settled for a draw far to early in the 2nd half when Moyes took off 2 attacking players for Yarmolenko and Noble. Disappointing.