West Ham manager David Moyes transformed from interviewee to interviewer after what he felt was a controversial defeat to Arsenal.
The Hammers’ hopes of a top-four finish were finally extinguished following the 2-1 reversal against the Gunners, with winning the Europa League their only remaining hope of entering the Champions League.
Goals from Rob Holding and Gabriel either side of a Jarrod Bowen strike was enough for Arsenal to earn all three points and boost their own hopes of at least a fourth placed finish. But Moyes felt his side were hard done by, with two key decisions going against his side.
Firstly, with the game deadlocked at one goal apiece, Bowen ran beyond the Arsenal back four only to go down under the challenge of Aaron Ramsdale. However, rather than punish the visitors’ keeper, referee Mike Dean opted to book the West Ham striker for simulation.
Speaking after the game, Ramsdale was adamant he had made no contact with Bowen and suggested the forward went down anticipating contact. And while Moyes suggested he agreed with that assessment, he did label the tackle as reckless and felt his player could have done more to initiate contact.
"I don't ever want my players to dive because I just don't really believe in it,” he told Sky Sports. “I think Jarrod could have easily left his leg there and trailing it into the goalkeeper, maybe he should have.
"It was a reckless challenge by the goalkeeper. The only thing that went for him was it was classed as no contact." But it was the second incident which appeared to rile Moyes even more, claiming VAR may have missed a handball in the build-up to the decisive second goal.
Replays inconclusively failed to prove whether the ball had struck Rob Holding’s arm before it came back across the box for his defensive colleague to nod in. And Moyes was clearly frustrated that VAR hasn’t overruled the decision and turned the question to Geoff Shreeves in a prickly post-match interview.
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"Do you think Holding on the second one heads it with his arm first of all? It looks as if it hits his arm, I don't think he heads it. That would have been in the same phase of play wouldn't it? It hits his arm. They [VAR] can get it wrong sometimes as well, they have got it wrong a lot of times. I might be wrong."
West Ham will now prepare for the second leg of their Europa League semi-final with Eintracht Frankfurt and accepted that the exertions from the first meeting with the Bundesliga side had taken some of the energy out of his players’ legs.
"We had a game Thursday, they didn't, so we were entitled to a slow burning start,” he added. “It came down to two simple things, we'd have liked to have not given the corner kicks away but when we did we could have defended them better.”
