David Moyes believes the squad may have been pushing so hard to beat the bigger clubs that frailties still appear against those who may be considered lesser outfits.

The defeat by Brentford is the perfect example that we haven’t quite put the problem behind us along with the draw against Palace and a defeat at Wolves.

Moyes knows it can be an issue and that he and the squad are aware of it saying: “Maybe we have pushed so hard to show we can compete against the bigger clubs. And to be fair to the players, they’ve done a great job of doing that this season.

We mustn’t lose focus on last season, we picked up an awful lot of points off the teams who were below us, winning home and  away against them.

So it’s something that we need to get back on because you’ll obviously pick up more points from those games than you will do from beating the top teams because it’s so hard to do.

We’re aware of it. I do think there was there was a wee bit of mitigating circumstances I think Crystal Palace have proved to be a decent side this season and we probably caught Brentford who scored a goal in the last minute,  so you can say there is a bit of a twist of how the results came about.

But I take your point, and I think it’s something we have to try and do, we have to try and make sure that we win these games and come away with three points if we can.”