It is difficult to know which statistic should cause the most embarrassment for West Ham. Perhaps the one about this being the 15th time they have shipped at least three goals in this season’s Premier League will be your favourite. But we also need to remember they have the leakiest defence in the top flight, with 67 conceded in 35 games, and that their fourth 4-1 defeat in 2018 means they have let in three goals or more in 13 home fixtures since moving to the London Stadium two years ago.
Put in that grim context, it becomes harder to write off their latest collapse against Manchester City as a one-off. City are a devastating team, of course, and the champions created enough chances to score the six goals that would have seen them break Chelsea’s record of 103 from the 2009-10 season. Two more will do the trick, though, and it also seems a safe bet that Pep Guardiola’s side will secure the win they need to beat Chelsea’s tally of 95 points from 13 years ago.
But West Ham cannot hide behind City’s sophisticated ruthlessness. The numbers will make David Moyes wince and they should have the same effect on David Gold and David Sullivan, the club’s co-owners. Relegation remains a possibility with three games remaining and West Ham, who host Manchester United and Everton after visiting Leicester City on Saturday, will be pushing their luck if they continue to defend this badly.
They should not kid themselves. West Ham’s goal difference is five worse than 18th-placed Southampton, who are three points below them after beating Bournemouth, and this humiliation exposed their repeated failures in the transfer market yet again.
The holes in this squad have stretched West Ham to breaking point. In different circumstances Moyes would have been able to remove Declan Rice from the firing line after the promising 19-year-old’s inexperience flared in the previous weekend’s defeat at Arsenal. Yet the fragile, ageing pair of Winston Reid and James Collins are injured and José Fonte moved to China at the end of February, leaving Moyes with no alternative to Rice, while it is baffling that West Ham’s defence contained a 36-year-old who was a free agent at the end of January.
Patrice Evra’s three starts have all ended in 4-1 defeats and it seemed fitting that City’s opening goal arrived when Leroy Sané’s shot deflected in off the French defender. City were rampant, slicing through West Ham at will, and they doubled their lead when Pablo Zabaleta, another expensive veteran who has seen better days, scored an own-goal in the 27th minute.
The reason Moyes has mostly favoured a 3-4-2-1 system is because he does not trust his team to defend well enough in a 4-4-2 system. The Scot, who replaced Slaven Bilic in November, is not wrong. West Ham have vulnerable full-backs, a shortage of centre-backs, ponderous central midfielders, no fit wide players and strikers who do not work hard enough off the ball. They have mostly lined up without a traditional centre-forward under Moyes, with Marko Arnautovic often shouldering the goalscoring burden in an unfamiliar lone role up front.
Arnautovic led the line again here and West Ham briefly threatened an unlikely comeback when City dozed off towards the end of the first half, Aaron Cresswell’s fine free-kick catching out Ederson at his near post.
Yet that goal merely irritated the visitors. Fine work from the outstanding Raheem Sterling allowed Gabriel Jesus to walk the ball in for City’s third and Guardiola’s midfielders toyed with Mark Noble and Cheikhou Kouyaté, highlighting how misguided West Ham’s board were not to sign the defensive midfielder Moyes wanted in January.
It felt desperate when Moyes made a triple substitution after Fernandinho scored City’s fourth. “We just wanted not to concede any more goals,” the manager said.
Boos greeted Manuel Lanzini’s removal, but Moyes was furious with the midfielder for losing possession to Fernandinho, who exchanged passes with Sterling before sweeping the ball past Adrián. “Everybody should look at the fourth goal,” Moyes said. “Then maybe people would understand.” The evidence is damning.
