West Ham United had 31 goal attempts, ten of them on target and ten of them blocked, nine corners and 55 touches inside the Leicester City penalty area.
But, ultimately, the Hammers left King Power Stadium with only one goal and zero points to show for their attacking endeavours as the Foxes somehow secured a 3-1 Premier League victory on Tuesday evening.
The Irons were dominant for long, long periods in the East Midlands, but a failure to take opportunities, combined with loose defending at vital moments, condemned Julen Lopetegui’s side to a seventh defeat in 14 top-flight matches under the Spaniard.
Incredibly, no fewer than 13 different West Ham players had goal attempts, but Mads Hermansen made seven saves, Danny Ings hit the post, Crysensio Summerville saw a shot cleared off the goal line and the visitors had a goal ruled out for a foul on the Leicester goalkeeper by Tomáš Souček on a frustrating evening.
Jamie Vardy ran through in trademark style to open the scoring inside two minutes. West Ham then had 21 first-half shots but failed to equalise. Bilal El Khannouss struck a second on the break on 61 minutes and, with the Irons leaving more and more space as they chased the game, Patson Daka made it 3-0 on 90.
There was time for Niclas Füllkrug to head in his first West Ham goal in added time on his return from three months out injured, but the German’s effort was nothing more than a consolation on an otherwise forgettable night.
Speaking to West Ham TV, Lopetegui was understandably disappointed, but reiterated his belief that, should his players continue to create chances, and cut out their defensive lapses, they will start winning Premier League matches on a regular basis.
It’s true it is a hard night to talk about football, because sometimes football is simple and tonight I think it is difficult [to understand how we lost].
We created a lot of chances, we shot 31 times on their goal and were in the opposition’s box a lot of times, but we didn’t score.
It’s true that for me the first goal was key. We have to try to avoid this goal in the first minutes, but after this goal I think that we did all we could do to score, but we didn’t do it.
Normally, when you do what we did, you are going to win the match, but we didn’t do that and it’s hard to explain. It’s hard for the players, for us and for the fans.
To change this situation, we have to play as we did for 65 or 70 minutes with this attitude.
In the second half, it’s true that in one moment when they went forward, maybe we lost our calm and they took advantage of more spaces and got their second goal, but even with the second goal I had the feeling that we could change the score. We didn’t do it and it’s frustrating and hard to explain, then they scored their third goal.
Talking about football, it’s the only way that I know to change the situation, to create a lot of chances, to be able to play in the opponents’ half and to have this attitude.
In this case, I think that we are going to be able, for sure, to change this situation.
I think [keeping] the clean sheet is key.
We worked in two matches recently with two clean sheets and we have to be more consistent, trying to threaten the opposition’s goal, but at the same time defending better.
In the first half they had one chance and they scored from the one chance we conceded at the start of the match.
We have to avoid this kind of action. It was one bad decision in the moment and we jumped [out of defence and Jamie Vardy ran through to score] but after this, I repeat, we did everything we had to do but we didn’t score.
We had a lot of chances, so we have to stand up, looking and thinking about the next match.
I am sure that if we are able to have this number of chances, we are going to win a lot of matches.
I think that’s why today, I repeat, it was one good way to go forward, but we need to do better and not concede the first goal and be more effective in the opposite box.
We have to do that because when you have this number of chances you are going to score normally, but in the Premier League the level of the teams means they are going to have one or two chances.
When you are losing, you are going to concede more space and that’s what happened today.
In the meantime, I think we have been much better than them, had a lot of chances in the opposite box, but that’s the way it went.
