Moyes: “We didn’t do any of basics well”

Frustrated David Moyes watched the Hammers scored three goals but leave empty handed.

And he was ready to admit the team’s overall performance wasn’t good enough for them to take anything from the game.

Three well-worked corners saw the Irons convert three of their first four efforts, although Crystal Palace would take the points via a 4-3 scoreline .

When Tomáš Souček put the Hammers ahead inside ten minutes, all seemed well but while Michail Antonio and Nayef Aguerd were also on the scoresheet, Moyes was left ruing defensive mistakes as West Ham saw their five-game unbeaten run on their travels end via a seven-goal thriller in south London.

Afterwards in his post match presser Moyes said: “Overall our performance didn’t warrant us getting much out of the game.

I was hoping we’d get a point in the end but I didn’t think we played well enough. My teams don’t defend the way we defended today and that would be the key message really.

We lost a lot of first balls, we lost a lot of second balls, I nearly felt that every ball in midfield went to them and we never picked anything up.

They kept the pressure on us and we didn’t deal with that part of the game well enough. That’s the reason why we didn’t take anything out of it.

Taking this game in isolation, we had to play on Wednesday and Palace played on Tuesday, which gives them a little bit of a lead in an early kick-off.

I don’t want to use it as an excuse but it’s certainly a reason why we’ve maybe not been at our best today.

We’ve started to look more threatening from set pieces in the last month to be honest, and today if you get one goal from a set piece you’re doing well, but to get three [was great].

But we never made enough chances in open play at all and that’s the bit that bothers me, that I can’t get enough goals in open play from the players I’ve got in the team.

We look a threat when we’ve got a corner kick or a free-kick, but open play is becoming a problem at the moment.

You can’t question the players’ spirit at all to try and get back in the game.

I’ve told the players that after the game, I can never question their professionalism or their work. They do try, maybe we’re lacking a bit of quality at the moment, or confidence in bits of our passing, or how we play out of the back.

We have to get that confidence and keep it. Some of our results recently have made us feel good, but today we didn’t do any of the basic things well.”