Moyes blames the penalty

David Moyes insists the penalty given to Brighton was the turning point in the Hammers’ 2-0 defeat on Sunday.

The Irons were roundly dreadful against the Seagulls and struggled to truly test Robert Sanchez in the Brighton goal until Tomas Soucek saw two headers saved in quick succession late on.

Moyes, though, felt that his side were playing well until Thilo Kehrer, making his first start for the club after joining from PSG in the week, brought down Danny Welbeck and conceded a penalty after just 20 minutes.

Alexis Mac Allister scored it, and the Irons struggled to create any kind of route back into the game, with Brighton adding a second after the hour mark, when Leandro Trossard finished off a superb, flowing move, the kind the Hammers could not create.

Speaking after the game, Moyes pinned the blame on the spot-kick decision.

Quoted by BBC Sport, he said: “I’m disappointed because we didn’t win. We did OK but we gave away a couple of really poor goals.

“The penalty was the turning point, we started OK and contained them a little bit but we lacked that bit of quality and we didn’t keep the ball when we won it. We hadn’t done badly up till then.

“The same situation happened in the second half as well. We got ourselves back in the game and looked threatening but the second goal was a killer and we were punished.

“Brighton are a good team. I did think we had done better in some parts today against them that we had in the past but it doesn’t show in the result.”

This feels like a very, very odd summation of such a poor performance from Moyes.

We were watching something else!