West Ham were beaten by a scoreline that was much closer than the true reflection of the game against Newcastle United on Saturday, losing 3-2 to Newcastle United at London Stadium.
Two headers from Ciaran Clark and Federico Fernandez had the visitors, who had only scored six goals in the league all season prior to visiting the capital, ahead 2-0 at half time.
Jonjo Shelvey added a third from a free kick on 51 minutes, not long after DeAndre Yedlin had a goal ruled out for offside as West Ham were run off the park.
They rallied late with goals from Fabian Balbuena and Robert Snodgrass to give the scoreline a respectable look.
The result means it's five games without a win for Manuel Pellegrini, who is coming under pressure to turn around results but is not in danger of losing his job any time soon.
A criticism levelled at the Chilean in recent weeks is his unwillingness to ditch the current tactics he has employed throughout his tenure in the capital, a 4-1-1-3-1 if you will, that is clearly not working with the squad he has at his disposal.
West Ham have also failed to keep a clean sheet since the 2-0 win over Manchester United on September 22 and goalscorer Shelvey revealed post-game on Saturday how Newcastle exposed Pellegrini's side with ruthless efficiency.
He told the Newcastle United official website: "We know that Pellegrini’s teams like to play a high line. The gaffer spoke about it before.
"They (West Ham) always struggle with runners from deep and we worked on it in training and it paid off."
One such instance was when Miguel Almiron ran from deep, blasted his way past Aaron Cresswell and was then cynically felled by Issa Diop. Shelvey's subsequent free kick was headed back across goal by Joelinton for Clark to power home.
Two more times in the first half, Allan Saint-Maximin was foiled by Roberto and the Frenchman should have had the hosts 4-0 up by half time as he ran a 34-year-old Pablo Zabaleta ragged.
Another goalscorer in Clark added his two cents post match, saying: "I don’t think I’m surprised – it was something we worked on during the week in training.
"The coaches explained to us the way they wanted us to play and encouraged us that, if we played that way, we would get in and get some chances.
"As I say, on another day we could have been four or five up and the game would have been over."
