Our futures are at stake, warns Moyes
David Moyes, West Ham’s manager, has warned his players that “none of us will still be here” if they continue to play so abjectly and suffer the club’s second Premier League relegation this decade.
Moyes has refused to discuss his future beyond this season, but it is clear that he cannot see himself in charge in the Championship. And having apparently steered West Ham towards safety after taking over in November, the Scot is only too aware that the drop is very much a possibility again following their third loss in four league games.
“They know,” Moyes replied when asked if he will read the players the riot act, after calling the performance “an embarrassment” and “the worst since I’ve been here”.
“They have been told that this was miles and miles away from where I’m going – or they are going. If they are going to play like that, then there’ll be none of us here.”
Tensions are clearly running high at the London Stadium and all the negativity seems to be congregating at exactly the wrong time. David Gold, the West Ham joint-owner, tried to make a sharp exit but was confronted near to his Rolls-royce by angry fans, one of whom told him to “get out of our f------ club”.
Predictably there was a mobile phone footage of the incident and predictably it went viral. The unedifying sight of an obviously nervous 81-year-old only appears to compound this ever-developing mess.
Moyes agreed that the next two matches, home fixtures against Burnley on Saturday and then Southampton, could “define” their season. “Yes, they could do,” he said. “We are now down to nine games. Before I was thinking, a point a game will normally get you to about 40 points; the old-fashioned [safety] figure. But we are now having to do more than that.
“I’d like the message to be that we are fine, but the truth of the matter is that we’re not. I think we’ve got a squad who can do it, but we were without three or four who are important. Coming here without two of our centre-halves was really difficult for us.”
Moyes expects Angelo Ogbonna to recover from an illness and hopes James Collins’ hamstring problem will also clear up, particularly after Winston Reid suffered a knee injury when knocked unconscious in the first half. By that point man of the match Ki Sung-yueng had clinically converted a 25-yarder and Mike van der Hoorn was soon to head home. An Andy King tap-in and Jordan Ayew’s penalty rounded off the humiliation for the visitors, which was in no way made less complete by Michail Antonio’s late consolation.
It was Swansea’s seventh consecutive win at the Liberty Stadium and they are now 13th in the table, their highest position since the early weeks of the season. On the same points, only one place above West Ham but looking in a different league confidence-wise.