He may have played in and managed over 1,750 senior matches during a career stretching back over 40 years, but heavy defeats still bite hard at David Moyes.
The West Ham United manager was hugely disappointed with the performance his team produced in a record 0-6 home Premier League defeat by Arsenal at London Stadium.
In 1,132 games as a manager, only once has a team managed by Moyes lost by a wider margin than his Hammers did on Sunday, while this was just the second time in West Ham’s own history that they had been defeated by a six-goal margin on home turf.
Arsenal took full advantage of their opponents’ poor showing, scoring all six of their goals in a 33-minute period either side of half-time, two from set pieces, one from a penalty and three more by exploiting poor defending from the Irons.
Speaking to West Ham TV, Moyes said he, his staff and players would take collective responsibility for Sunday’s performance and result and would take collective responsibility produce better going forward...
It’s a day we don't want to really remember. We've had plenty of days here we do want to remember but today is one we certainly don’t.
I don't know the reason why [the players weren’t at it today]. We've had a week’s preparation, and we've tried to try to do things the way we would do in a normal lead-up to a weekend game.
We all know we had a great win here in the League Cup against them, and we won at the Emirates, so there was a level of confidence behind the scenes going into the game that we could get another result after those wins, but Arsenal were so good.
From minute one, we could hardly lay a glove on them, we didn't get close to them and we probably showed them a bit too much respect.
Then we started to make some really, really stupid decisions in our distribution and our passing and when we should pass or when we should play forward and just too many things were wrong today.
We're losing a bit of stature in our side at the moment as we're going along.
We're not quite as big and powerful as we were last year – Declan played a big part in that –and our stature generally is what's helped us score goals and defend lots of set pieces.
Today, we just started to look as if we've not quite got that stature in the side at the moment.
But it's not like us. We are normally pretty strong at set pieces in both boxes and today Arsenal were very good at them. They work really hard at it and have got a really good set-piece coach and you could see that by what they've done today.
It’s all about ‘we’ now.
It's not about the players and not about the manager. It’s how we all get together and I've said that to the players.
How we respond now is really going to be big and probably the levels we need to show we're going to have to show, we’re going to have to show a bigger level of fight and commitment.
Over my time here at West Ham, whether it be this period or the one before, I really can't remember too many of my teams performing as badly defensively and if we have done in the past maybe we maybe didn't quite the same level of defenders or maybe not the same level of players.
We've got international players in just about all the slots, but I thought we were we weak in our defending, as we were at Manchester United last week as well.
I want to apologise for today's performance and result.
To be part of a football club and be a big football supporter, there's tough times and West Ham will know that more than anybody.
I look back and when I came in we had to try and avoid relegation, and we avoided relegation. The journey we've all been on in the last three or four years trying to qualify for Europe, getting to a semi-final, and you all know the good times we had in Prague about six months ago.
That will not make people feel too much happier with today's result, but I think it's just important that we remember that those good times in football can also be bad times and today was a bad day for us.
