Julen Lopetegui apologised to the Claret and Blue Army following their 3-0 home defeat to Chelsea in the Premier League on Saturday.
West Ham United have now lost their first three home games of the new season for the first time in their history after two goals from Nicolas Jackson in the first half and one from Cole Palmer early in the second half made for a difficult afternoon at the London Stadium.
The Irons were dismantled twice in the first 20 minutes by long, straight passes that Jackson finished past Alphonse Areola, who then provided the assist for Palmer, who fired the ball high into the net, ending any realistic hopes of a Hammers comeback.
West Ham’s best spell came after they were 2-0 down, but the chance to reduce the deficit with a penalty was denied when referee Sam Barrott ruled that Wesley Fofana’s challenge on Crysencio Summerville did not warrant a foul.
In fact, Lopetegui neither looked for excuses nor made any when speaking to West Ham TV after the game. Instead, he vowed to work hard with his staff and players to improve his performance, his defensive performance and his results in the future…
It was a hard day.
We had high expectations and really wanted to win the game. I think we started well, but we conceded a very, very easy goal in the first attack and after the first and second goals I think it became more difficult.
We had chances but we didn’t score before half time. I think we had a penalty (appeal) and a clear chance that we should have taken to do more in the second half but we conceded another goal in the first action.
I felt like they were scoring goals very, very easily every time and obviously it’s going to be harder to compete like that, so we need to improve and change those things to compete in the Premier League.
We need to keep a clean sheet because that is very important to stay in the game. You can’t accept easy goals so we have to change that. We are all very, very, very sad but we have to change our attitude and our ambitions for the next game against Liverpool and look forward even if we are very, very unlucky today.
