David Moyes has put the loss to Fulham down to fatigue, but he doesn’t seem to think that West Ham played that bad.

West Ham fell short in their must win game against Fulham. Despite a promising start, they collapsed and, following Fulham’s first, never really looked like they were up to the task.

However, manager David Moyes sees things slightly differently and believes that West Ham just didn’t take their chances. “I thought we had the stronger part of the game for the best part of the first 20 to 25 minutes,” he told the official site. “I thought we missed two big chances before they scored, and we needed to be clinical in those moments so we wouldn’t have to give out too much energy in the game. As the game went on, we ran out of energy.”

“It was a huge moment [Antonio’s early chance], but we were susceptible to a counter-attack as we had an attacking team to try and win, and it probably went against us in a way as we got done on the counter-attack today.”

“I’m really disappointed with the whole thing, but I felt as if we started the game relatively well, made chances, but didn’t take the moments when we got them. It just looked like a day where we looked as if we couldn’t take our chances. We’ve probably had more possession than we’ve had in many games this season, but we couldn’t make the most of it.”

On top of their mistakes, Moyes believes that their exhaustion from playing Bayer Leverkusen on Thursday played a massive part. “It’s been a demanding schedule, but we didn’t put on a good enough show. Of course they are [feeling the schedule]. I think we have seven games in April and we are getting towards the mid-end of it. Today was a really important game for us, and we knew if we won we would go sixth in the league, so I’m really disappointed we couldn’t put on a better show. I genuinely think we had the chances, but we didn’t take them.”

Obviously there can be no arguing against the fact that tiredness played a massive role, but it is yet another example of Moyes refusing to take responsibility. He has had 4 years to build his squad and he would’ve known the Hammers were lacking in depth. Over his tenure he has spent nearly half a billion pounds – why does he persist with an extremely small squad?

Thankfully, as damaging as the loss is, West Ham have a chance to make up for it. If they can do the improbable and go through to the semi-finals of the Europa League, then the mood around the club will change in an instant.