Julen Lopetegui was frustrated with his team's performance as West Ham United were felled by Nottingham Forest on Saturday afternoon.
From the moment Chris Wood nodded the in-form Reds into a 27th-minute lead, a positive result seemed unlikely for a visiting Irons side who struggled to create openings by the River Trent.
Moments after Lucas Paquetá came close to levelling with their best chance of the afternoon, the Londoners' task was made all the more difficult by Edson Álvarez collecting his second yellow card of 2024/25 on the stroke of half-time.
The Head Coach made two changes at the break, introducing Michail Antonio and Carlos Soler from the bench, and although his team flickered briefly at the start of the second period, Forest soon killed off the contest.
First Callum Hudson-Odoi's deflected cross-shot flew past Łukasz Fabiański, then Ola Aina lashed home from outside the box to leave the visitors well beaten and Lopetegui admitting his side need to perform much better if they are to find the consistency they require.
After the second goal it was a very different match and it was a hard day for us and for our fans too.
That's why we have to say first of all sorry for our fans. We are very disappointed today and we have to use these hard moments to push forward and to look forward to the next challenge.
We know that, even if you are showing control [in the early part of the match], you have to avoid the counter-attack, you have to defend the crosses better.
It happened that they scored a goal in this action and after the goal it was more difficult for us.
We had a very clear chance to level the match before the red card.
It was a key minute because we were not able to equalise and then straight away it’s a red card. Before the half-time break we were thinking about any changes and looking forward to the second half.
At the start of the second half we were able to have three or four corners, waiting for our moment to level the match. Unfortunately they scored the second goal.
We can and we have to do much better.
You can prepare the team but the players have to take the right decisions and we have to play with eleven men.
It's one of the situations we can avoid because there was no danger of this. We had a lot of players in our box.
It is a big advantage for the opponent above all because there is a lot of time in front of you. You are losing the match so it was a bad moment for us and a very good moment for them because they wanted to damage us on the counter-attack.
That's why in the second half we tried to wait a moment. We were not able to because we suffered the second goal and it was different. That's why I repeat that today is a hard night for us.
We have to look forward to the next challenge against Everton and try to use this moment to remind us and push us up.
Hopefully we can get everybody back together and regroup. I think that we need to have this kind of environment against Everton at home. It's going to be hard but for sure it's going to be important for us.
We have to be ready to prepare for this match this week and to think that there are a lot of points in front of us. But if we want to achieve good things we have to compete better. We have to be more consistent.
It's not about winning against Manchester United. It's about being able to compete always.
