David Moyes has held his hands up and admitted that Manchester City were simply too good for the Hammers today.
The Irons were well beaten by Pep Guardiola’s side at the London Stadium, losing 2-0 thanks to a brace from new signing Erling Haaland.
He scored a penalty and then finished off a brilliant Kevin De Bruyne through ball to give City all three points.
The Irons struggled for possession and for chances in a game that was bereft of any real intensity, because of the immense heat on the day.
The temperature reached in excess of 30 degrees at the London Stadium and Moyes has admitted his side were well off City’s level on Sunday.
Speaking after the game, as per BBC Sport, he said: “They were so good today. Both their full-backs played like midfielders today and it caused us problems. We hung in the game as long as we could but we were well outplayed today. We had a good start but we were well outplayed.”
One bright spot for the Irons was the debut of Gianluca Scamacca, as he came on for Mikey Antonio in the second half.
He didn’t manage to test Ederson – bar a header that forced a good save but was ruled offside – but Moyes is confident he will prove his worth.
He added: “We are looking forward to getting him in the right condition. He is not far away. Getting minutes today will be really important for him. I am hoping he will come good, we need more attacking options.
“We are trying to build, we want to strengthen. We have had a good team over the last couple of seasons and we want to try and do that again.”
I’m sorry but we have to face facts
We were not prepared for today’s match.
And that is a very bad indictment on Moyes and his team. It shouldn’t come as a surprise because pre season we’ were woeful. Against Glasgow Rangers we were embarrassing . Many of you said pre season doesn’t count it’s only about fitness. Well today, we were crap and we weren’t fit.
There is no excuse for not being ready for the opening game of the season. Many of you delusionalists will say well it’s Man City.
But the writing as been on the wall for sometime. The end of last season was relegation form. Let’s stop pretending.
Something is seriously wrong.
In hindsight it started when Stuart Pearce resigned. That should have been an indication that something is seriously wrong. Pearce is not the type of person to just walk away, unless something is seriously wrong. You can stick your head In the sand as much as you want. But I have a really bad feeling this is the beginning of the end of Moyes.
You could be right Eug, there is a pattern that started last season of performances that were not intense enough. Moyes has held his hands up and taken accountability by saying he was taken by surprise and didn’t adapt, that does happen with teams facing new systems so am not going to read too much into it and keep an open mind on how we will do. Momentum is a strange thing Scamacca has reportedly brought a new energy, Moyes want’s to sell the players that aren’t on board or good enough and renew the squad with enthusiastic players that will compete for first team places. If you look at our reserve team Diop, Benrahma, Vlasic etc last season Yarmolenko, Kral, Noble these were players that clearly weren’t good enough to hold down a first team position, whether Moyes has managed that correctly or not who knows ? In simple terms you need to have players competing healthily for first team places to keep players fresh, Antonio hasn’t had competition for a couple of years and gone stale and Moyes has said the team are stale, Rice and Soucek need competition, Onana would have provided that but we made an offer considerably less than half what was on offer elsewhere and he has chosen money, Lingard chose money, so there is also a pattern on the financial front that we aren’t off the pitch competitive enough to attract players.
Whether it is the board or Moyes and Newman or a combination of both something has to be done to change that and perhaps that’s why Warburton is here to be a director of football or something that enables Moyes to be fully committed in the areas he feels he needs to be ?
No idea but if things don’t change it is likely to be a mediocre season, perhaps changing focus not to neat the top six and instead Allardyce style to ensure we win all the other games could be an interim strategy that may prove just as fruitful in terms of points.