David Moyes cut a disappointed figure after seeing his West Ham United team concede a 3-1 lead in the closing stages of Saturday’s 3-4 Premier League defeat at Newcastle United.
The Hammers’ defensive frailties reared their ugly head again at St James’ Park, where a seemingly commanding position and three potential points were lost in the space of 14 second-half minutes.
Goals from Michail Antonio, Mohammed Kudus and Jarrod Bowen saw the Londoners overturn Alexander Isak’s early penalty, but the Swede’s second successful spot-kick proved a pivotal moment.
With the home supporters’ frustration turning to belief, and West Ham retreating further and further into their own territory, substitute Harvey Barnes took full advantage to score two goals of his own and send Moyes and his players back down south with nothing to show for their efforts.
Moyes admitted his own decisions had not worked on the day, while he also again lamented officiating calls that he felt should have gone his team’s way – particularly when Dan Burn challenged Kudus as the Ghanaian raced through on goal with the score at 1-1 late in the first half.
As it was, despite then going on to take a two-goal advantage, the visitors could not contain the Magpies and have now conceded 54 goals in 30 Premier League matches – fourth-highest in the division – and kept just five clean sheets.
And so, with a derby at home to Tottenham Hotspur next up on Tuesday evening, the manager knows his team need to find a higher level of resilience if they are to secure European qualification for a fourth straight season.
I’m gutted, absolutely.
We are trying to challenge for Europe, we wanted to beat one of the teams close to us, and for long periods we looked like we were [going to beat Newcastle].
We scored some good goals, but when we got 3-1 up we just weren’t showing the elements of defensive duty which you have to do.
It looked too easy today, but I have to say that so many decisions went against us today.
There’s disappointment, more than anything, that we didn’t win the game.
Ultimately we should have come away with points from the game and we didn’t do so.
The [second] penalty kick [awarded for Kalvin Phillips' foul on Anthony Gordon on 77 minutes] is a huge turning point, but I also thought we made a change [by replacing Michail Antonio with Phillips on 69 minutes] because we felt as if they had got on top and missed a couple of chances.
We tried to give ourselves another midfield player at 3-1 up and we didn’t want to wait for it to get to 3-2.
Probably that decision didn’t work on the day, but more importantly I think the boy puts his foot in front of Kalvin and I don’t know how he’s supposed to see his leg.
The penalty kick makes it 3-2 and we had been doing OK. We gave up a couple of chances before that which I didn’t like and they had started to get some control shooting down the hill, but we had another day when very few things went for us.
We got ourselves in front and did a lot of good things.
We looked a real threat in our attacking play for most of the day. We just couldn’t be defensively sound and let’s be fair we’ve had that issue many times already this season.
I’ve not had the chance to look back at it yet, but feeling was he (Dan Burn) pushed Mo in the back when he was going through on goal. That would have been a red card and could have changed the game.
We have to get ourselves back on it and show more resilience and toughness, which we didn’t do today.
