Sydney FC 3 West Ham United 1

Embarrassing doesn’t even get close to the events which unfolded in New Zealand earlier this morning.

The Hammers added a horrible defeat to their pre-season against minnows Sydney FC

That makes it two draws and two defeats from a pre-season campaign which has become a total disaster.

Fellow Premier League outfit Newcastle United, meanwhile, have beaten both sides 4-0 and 1-0 as the worries heap up on Sam Allardyce and his men who – on a positive note –  appear to be reducing the reliance on longer balls.

We can only hope that the new attacking, more ‘footballing’ style comes together very fast for if it doesn’t there could be even more  troubling  times ahead.

Sydney opened the scoring in seven minutes via Corey Gameiro who slipped a shot under Adrian with Joey O’Brienwell out of position.

They added a second after 26 minutes when Bernie Ibini found  Alex Brosque who made it 2-0 with a shot past the Spaniard.

Matt Jarvis’ reduced the arrears when his centre  was deflected into the net by Nikola Petkovic’s hand before the referee allowed a totally disgraceful goal.

Terry Antonis quite literally punched  the ball past  Aaron Cresswell for Gamerro ensure another quite appalling defeat.

David Gold was quick to tweet after the game: “west ham 1 Sydney 3 Big screen shows blatant hand ball 5 times ref goes to 3 officials all said goal none looked at the big screen. dg”

But the sad truth was that despite that being the case, the Hammers look almost entirely out of sorts ahead ahead of the new season.

We do of course have Enner Valencia arriving so long as he gets his work permit on Tuesday but nothing we’ve seen so far will fill us with anything but great fear with  Schalke and Malaga waiting for us next.

Irons: Adrian, Demel, O’Brien, Reid, Collins, Noble, Diame, Nolan, Downing, Jarvis, Cole.

Subs: Jaaskelainen, Howes, Cresswell, Fanimo, Potts, Poyet, Whitehead, Vaz Te, Zarate.

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