West Ham were last night dumped out of the FA Cup at the 3rd round thanks to a 1-0 loss to Bristol City.

It was a tie that has brought much misery to east London, with a significant amount of injuries and now suspensions at the hands of the Championship side, who simply seemed to show more fight overall than David Moyes’ makeshift Irons side.

An early 3rd minute goal from Conway, following a terrible mistake in the back pass from Mavropanos was enough to seal the tie for the hosts, as West Ham struggled to manage the physicality of Liam Mannings side, although there are question marks over the performance of the officials, with some nasty instances whereby very little was seen to be done by the referee and the assistants.

Our Podcast hosts Dave Walker and ExWHUEmployee were both understandably frustrated with the result and overall performance, with Walker in particular not impressed with the approach made in the loss last night.

“Last night was exactly what I expected,” stated Walker. “Negative tactics, invited pressure, lacked desire and not enough quality on the ball.

“Disappointing night for everyone. Let’s just hope that with two competitions left to concentrate on, we see an improvement.”

Ex also wasn’t surprised with the result, highlighting the current injury crisis as a key factor as to why West Ham failed to really impose ourselves on the replay at Ashton Gate.

“Unfortunately I always felt this defeat was coming,” said our club insider. “With so many attacking players out it was always going to be a struggle.

“The key thing was not to concede early with that formation and frustrate them. Then immediately an individual error means we concede and our game plan goes out of the window. We were also battling against a very crowd influenced referee, who made some terrible decisions and with no VAR (which the inconsistency in this tournament is ludicrous) to help us.

“A final frustration is firstly use some of the Academy players from the start over fringe players who clearly don’t want to be here – and why have an incomplete bench with two keepers on? Use it to give Academy players that experience of being round the first team! A very frustrating day all round.”