Fair play to Slaven Bilic for remaining true to himself after the game and refusing to find excuses and get involved in the blame game.He told the official site: “I said after the Bournemouth game that in the Premier League you can make it up, but this was like a final because you need to win to go through, therefore the disappointment is massive.
“OK, we can always find excuses like missing players and that we should have scored the chances we created and all that, but we didn’t play good. In the first half, we didn’t play with desire as a team, it was all individuals and we were second best.
“I said before the game in Romania that if you give their players the time to turn and play, they can pass the ball, of course, and we were doing plenty of that. There was not enough movement, we played very slowly and we didn’t take the few chances we should have taken.
“They took their chance with a goal on the counter-attack. From our point of view, we lost the ball in a very strange way and they took advantage of the situation.”
“To be fair, we changed a bit in the second and thought we had to change the system and one or two players but deep down you know it’s not about the system, but about the way we played.
“Of course I am angry and frustrated and everything but I’m much more disappointed than angry, because we really wanted to go through to the Europa League. That’s why we tried so hard last season, to have this opportunity.”
The ‘scapegoat’ should be the lack of quality in the Squad – a couple of injuries and your scrabbling about trying to put out a team – no real attacking threat!
Take Calleri for example, you bring him in from Argentina – odds on he doesn’t speak the language, new teammates, new Country etc etc – and you pitch him straight in as the main Striker!
Then you get the hump because the Team play like they’ve never met before, got their boots on the wrong feet and so on!
You can’t have too much quality and West Ham badly need more!
We have the quality they are just injured.Jesus so much over reaction.
Got to agree pal,too much anger and dummy’s getting thrown out of the pram’s. COYI
Too many new players at one time doesn’t help, twice Antonio was annoyed at Calamari running in to his space, just takes time to mould a team.
On a more serious point, I have just seen the footage of the fighting in the stands…. We do not want to be associated with that kind of behaviour, how must DS & DG feel having spent millions on this project and in the eyes of the world in the new London stadium we have a spectacle like that. Unbelievable.
I put a thread out on KUMB asking what the aggro was all about – I know it doesn’t condone it but apparently there were some Rumanians in amongst the home support. Combined with a dire performance, you can just about understand some hotheads getting the hump with people celebrating an away goal.
Pretty poor show, I know – but there you are!
The manager’s honesty !! If he was honest he would have mentioned his own inept display. Tactically clueless last night. A game we had to win and he plays 3 holding midfielders, don’t let anyone tell me Kouyate is a 10. I am disgusted with his performance. Can I also add that something has changed between last summer and this summer in the process of player recruitment. Some of the players that we have bought in are no where near PL standard. Something is a miss. One player who stands out that he is totally out of depth is Nordsvelt. I just cannot understand how he was selected last night after his performance at the weekend. I would love to know who signed him and what they saw in him.