Under-fire David Moyes spared of blame as West Ham ‘let him down’ in 6-0 thrashing
Paul Merson has blasted West Ham for “surrendering” in their 6-0 loss to Arsenal, as he felt under-fire boss David Moyes was “let down” by his side.
Pressure on Hammers boss Moyes has been ramping up for a while, with his side putting in a number of poor performances of late. It’s now been eight games in all competitions since they lost won.
They’ve lost both of their last two games, scoring no goals and shipping nine within them. The last game saw them put to the sword by Arsenal, with West Ham being demolished 6-0.
That’s increased the pressure on Moyes, but Merson feels the manager was not to blame for the loss, as his team made a series of basic mistakes to make things easy for the Gunners.
“Defending-wise, if that happened at U10s football, you’d be going, ‘Seriously?’ – not getting tight, showing them inside on their proper foot, it is poor,’ Merson said on Sky Sports.
“Arsenal made West Ham surrender and I think that’s quite sad. As a player, that’s the one thing you don’t want to do.
“There are ways of losing football matches but that was a horrible way. I felt sorry for David Moyes. That is not his team. They let him down today.”
Merson went into further detail in an attack on the Hammers defence for not understanding how to deal with Arsenal’s attacking threat.
“Emerson, Ben White is not the danger! He lets him put a simple ball in. The centre-half – Saka is left-footed! You know he’s coming inside 99 out of 100 times,” he said.
“That tells me, as a player, do you really pay any attention to detail as to who you are playing against? Or are you just turning up?
“You’ve got to have more about you. It frustrates me. I don’t even play and I know what Saka is going to do. It was poor all round.”
Whether or not the loss was perceived to be Moyes’ fault, he’ll remain in danger if the slump in form continues. The Hammers were battling in and around the top four not long ago, and they’re now eighth, 11 points shy of fourth-placed Tottenham.
West Ham’s next few fixtures should not be all too difficult in comparison to some of those they have just played, so they may be able to stop the rot.
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