An “embarrassed” David Moyes turned on his sorry West Ham players after their Crystal Palace humiliation on Sunday, claiming he “could not believe” his side’s performance.
The Hammers were thrashed 5-2 at Selhurst Park, with the game as good as over after half an hour as Palace raced into a 4-0 lead.
The defeat leaves West Ham’s hopes of securing a fourth consecutive season in Europe in tatters and casts further doubt over Moyes’s future, with his contract up this summer.
While the Irons have spent much of the season hovering around the European places, their campaign has been littered with a series of catastrophic results.
They were hammered 5-0 at Fulham before Christmas, thrashed 6-0 at home to Arsenal earlier this year and threw away a 3-1 lead in the final 13 minutes to lose 4-3 at Newcastle last month. Moyes, however, believes Sunday’s showing was a new low.
“The first half was as bad as I have seen us play. We have had three or four of these incidents this season, games very similar, where I could not believe the team,” said Moyes.
“I don’t think the team, in the three years I have been here, have gone to the depths in the three of four games this year. Today, the first half was unacceptable.
“Maybe we’ve lost a wee bit of the tough culture that we’ve had, the pride in making sure that we didn’t concede and were hard to play against and difficult opposition. Today, we were none of them.”
The trip to south London always looked likely to pose an awkward challenge for the Hammers, who produced a huge effort to threaten an unlikely comeback in the Europa League quarter-final against Bayer Leverkusen on Thursday night.
However, the Scot insisted the quick turnaround was not to blame for his side’s lifeless display.
“I am giving no excuses whatsoever,” he added. “The players got praised for their performance on Thursday night but today was so bad I cannot put it into words.
“I am not giving Thursday night as an excuse. I am not accepting that.
“I am so disappointed for supporters who came in today and in truth I am embarrassed to sit here and be speaking on behalf of the team and the way they have performed today but I am the manager.
“I have got to say I have not had many teams who have played like that in my whole career.”
