Alphonse Areola has urged his teammates to “step up” following West Ham’s 2-0 defeat to Nottingham Forest on Saturday.
It was another frustrating afternoon for West Ham against Nottingham Forest as they made it 3 consecutive losses and extended their winless start to 2024. Considering that every game is now crucial after their woeful start to the year, coming away from Forest with 0 points is disastrous.
While fans are more divided than ever on the Moyes debate, goalkeeper Alphonse Areola (who pulled off some world-class saves) has promoted unity amongst the players to get out of this rough patch. “We’re having a tough time at the moment, but we need to keep fighting as a group,” he told the official site. “We share the frustration that everyone around the Club is feeling – we’re here to win, and we don’t want to let the fans down.”
“A season is long, and there are always periods of ups and downs. We started well, we’re over halfway now and we’re finding things hard. But we’ll keep fighting, and we’ll give everything to get through this spell. We have to stick together, keep our heads up and move forward, because there’s still a lot of football to play and a lot to play for.”
Despite being on the wrong end of, what the majority of stats suggest was, a one sided affair, the Frenchman was pleased with how the Hammers were able to keep hold of the ball but was disappointed with their efforts to stop Forest’s counter-attacking threat.
“We had control of the ball for large periods today, and showed how we can play. We just didn’t commit as many people forward as we would’ve liked, and their defenders did well.”
“We knew that they would look to catch us on the break, but we weren’t able to contain them,” he concluded. “The sending off was tough, but we just have to step up, try and avoid these kind of situations going forward and give everything, which we’ll keep trying to do.”
Starting from now, there needs to be serious changes in attitude and tactics if West Ham are to earn European football again. The Lacklustre, slow, effortless displays have to stop and they need to take all three points against Brentford, a team that they have a poor record against in recent years. It will not be easy, but this could still turn out to be an extremely successful season for the East London side.