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Conceding with pretty much the last kick of the game has become the norm for us this season, so when Winston Reid found the back of the net on Saturday it came to the surprise of nobody.
David Moyes wasn't impressed with the manner of the defeat and felt his side were hard done by. I'm not sure that I agree.
Speaking in his full-time email, Moyes said:
It was a very harsh way to lose a game.
I was pleased with a lot of what the players did today. It was always going to be a tough game – West Ham have some good players.
We struggled for the first 20 to 30 minutes, but after that we did quite well and created some chances ourselves.
We're very disappointed to lose the game.
I've looked at the goal back and I've confirmed to the referee that we believe it was offside. The referee believes it was not offside.
I thought we competed and did quite well.
We are disappointed, the players worked so hard and we've dropped a point in the end.
We had some big chances to score ourselves and we wanted to build some confidence.
We did well to ride through the opening twenty minutes and we had a couple of half decent chances where we could have scored goals. West Ham had it easy though. Considering their defensive issues and the fact they had the out of form Simone Zaza up front, we didn't hurt them enough and we rarely looked capable of scoring. The chances we did have, we didn't take. It wasn't good enough and it's pointless bemoaning our luck, because West Ham aren't world beaters and we failed to break them down.
I completely disagree with Moyes' thoughts on the West Ham winner - we should have saw out the final few minutes and got the draw, but this is a mentally fragile side who aren't capable of following a simple game plan and our manager made some bizarre changes in the lead up to that goal.
It would have been harsh of the referee to disallow it and Moyes might have had a slightly different viewpoint behind closed doors - in truth, his players were not completely switched on and many of them turned away from the ball when the shot from Winston Reid went in. It's another unforgivable error and it was even tougher to stomach at such a late stage in the game.
I'm worried about David Moyes' substitutions - again. Quite what the thinking behind taking off Wahbi Khazri for a right back was is anyone's guess. Whilst adding a defender should in theory give you more cover late in the game, it's a negative decision and all it served to do was force us back further into our own half, putting more pressure on ourselves to defend. Khazri might have been tired but I'm sure he could have seen out the remaining minutes of the game. He had played fairly well up until that point.
It's becoming difficult to analyse Moyes' words, in truth. With each win his excuses are wearing thin, and there's only so many times that he can tell us that 'they're working hard in training to put things right' that I can take before it becomes nothing more than fluff.
We've got an absolutely horrible week coming up. We really could do without travelling to the arse-end of the country to play Southampton on Wednesday night. Our squad isn't strong enough to cope with two games in a week and I'm crossing everything in the hope that we get through that match unscathed.
Arsenal on Saturday in the early game fills me with dread. They've finally sorted their defensive issues and they have form players in attack. I'd take a draw now.
Quite how David Moyes manages to pick his players up ahead of this fixture is beyond me. We look hopeless.
