Robert Snodgrass was left to regret the chances that got away after the Hammers missed out at points from the Chelsea match.

The Scotsman is convinced it would have all been very different had the Hammers put away their first half chances whilst in control.

But he admitted it was near Mission Impossible to come back after going behind to the leaders declaring: “They are a horrible team to go behind against because, when they score first, it’s programmed into their strategy that they will be very hard to break down.”

He added: “In the first half we started well, passed the ball and created some decent chances and if we’d taken them it would have been a different game, but that’s why they are flying high at the top. They’ve got a very good defensive record and at times, it was difficult to break them down.

“They are obviously very good at counter-attacking and sometimes when it’s like that we could have maybe taken a foul on the halfway line.

“That said, they did really well to get it forward so quickly. I thought we were the better team in the first half, so to go in a goal behind was difficult to get back from.

“When you see Chelsea play week-in, week-out, they don’t really concede and there is a method behind that. You can see that when you play against them too, because they put five behind the ball and defensively Victor Moses and Marcos Alonso tuck in. We knew they’d do that.

“It’s frustrating because if we’d taken those chances we created in the first half, it would have been a different game.”