An 'embarrassing' afternoon of football was the assessment of West Ham United’s 5-2 defeat at Selhurst Park, according to James Ward-Prowse.
Crystal Palace struck four goals in the first 31 minutes on Sunday afternoon to leave the Hammers with little chance of a positive result in south London, despite a first-half goal from Michail Antonio.
By the time a bizarre own goal arrived through Dean Henderson in the final minute of the 90, Jean-Philippe Mateta had already added his second – and Palace’s fifth – to complete a miserable afternoon.
Ward-Prowse admitted the performance was simply not good enough.
“It was embarrassing on our part,” Ward-Prowse said. “We had a fantastic night on Thursday – albeit we didn’t get through [to the UEFA Europa League semi-finals] – but we showed what a West Ham team should look like. We were on the front foot and aggressive.
“You can talk about the way you play with the ball but I think out of possession we didn’t show enough aggression and togetherness against Crystal Palace. I think that cost us.
“There are quite a few reasons why [we conceded four goals in the first 31 minutes] – but I don’t think the excuse of playing on Thursday night is anything we can use.
“If we want to be a top team and be contenders for a European place, you can’t perform like that against one of the best teams in the world at the moment Bayer Leverkusen, and then come to Crystal Palace and perform in the way that we did.”
The 4-1 scoreline at break left West Ham with far too much work to do to salvage a positive result in the second half – only once has a four-goal deficit been overturned to secure a point in the Premier League era.
The second half saw the Hammers push for a response, although they offered little after break.
Indeed, West Ham's second of the afternoon came from a Palace mistake rather than the Irons' attack, which left the hosts' defence largely untroubled through the 90 minutes.
Ward-Prowse made it clear the West Ham dressing room was aware of their performance and are keen to end a run of two consecutive Premier League defeats when they host Liverpool next Saturday.
“We didn’t need anything said to us at half-time because we all knew what went wrong,” he added.
“You can’t allow any team in football to score goals as easily as we did, especially in the Premier League. It doesn’t matter if you’re playing a team at the bottom or the top of the table, they will punish you.
“There is still a lot of football to play, and because this is the business end of the season we know every game is magnified in that way.
“[Liverpool] is a fantastic game to bounce back in and hopefully, we can give the fans something to cheer about against them.”
