Sloppy Irons!- West Ham 0 Fulham 2

Sloppy Irons do it again !

Another tired performance from West Ham and if it was not for the oldest man on the pitch, Fabianski – it could have been a lot worse.

Points dropped, our European involvement next year qualifying through the league is now looking increasingly unlikely, a pretty poor afternoon all round.

West Ham were straight out of the blocks and after only a few minutes Vladimír Coufal channeled his inner Pele, beat two defenders and laid a ball onto the feet of Michail Antonio but he ballooned it over the bar, when it seemed easier to score.

After bossing the game for the first 10 minutes, we shot ourselves in the foot when Alex Iwobi hit a hopeful long ball over the top, but Dinos Mavropanos tried to control it, missed it, with the ball going straight to Pereira – and the Brazilian simply rounded Fabianski to then fire into the empty net.

The goal certainly knocked the stuffing out of the Irons, although they slowly started to get back into the game. Nevertheless ,Fulham finished the first half the stronger of the two teams, and they went close to a second on a couple of occasions.

It also came as a surprise to discover we had 58% possession in that first half – so much for counter attack football !

Much of the same in the second half with West Ham still finding it hard to keep the ball. On the hour Dinos Mavropanos came off for captain Kurt Zouma. Moyes preumably had seen enough as Johnson and Soucek replaced Ward-Prowse and Coufal, but to little avail. As a few minutes later Fulham doubled their lead after a lovely counter when Paqueta was dispossessed in midfield after a crunching Palhinha tackle and within the bink of an eye Pereira raced up field, before finding Iwobi on the right edge of the box – and the Nigerian returned the pass to the unmarked midfielder who simply side footed home into an empty net for his second of the game.

The only bright spot I suppose was George Earthy coming on for his Premier League debut for the last ten minutes, but our afternoon got even worse when Alvarez accidentally clobbered the youngster, and his 3 minute debut came to an end by being carried off on a stretcher

Perhaps you can apportion some excuse for this sorry display on the exertions in Germany on Thursday?

I don’t know

Nevertheless, a very poor day at the office.