West Ham were trashed 5-0 by Chelsea in a performance that lacked effort, desire as well as any real care for the travelling fans.
With tube strikes reeking havoc, West Ham fans had a difficult journey to Stamford Bridge; they shouldn’t have bothered. While they turned up with brilliant support, the player decided not to turn up at all.
For the 5th time this season, West Ham conceded 5 goals this season (including their 6-0 loss to Arsenal). Cole Palmer got the opener following a deflection after Angelo Ogbonna decided to duck under the ball for some unknown reason.
15 minutes later, more woeful defending and another deflection allowed Conor Gallagher to double the hosts advantage, and Madueke made it 3-0 not long after.
For there to be any hope of a comeback, the Hammers would need to come out flying but, instead they carried on defending like, without exaggerating, a Sunday league team. They allowed Madueke to stroll through the defence who played an extremely unselfish pass to Nicolas Jackson to put the game beyond any doubt.
Chelsea didn’t stop there though, as Jackson took full advantage of the Irons disjointed backline to give his side the final goal of the game to make it 5-0.
Every single one of the players bar Kudus and Bowen (who was extremely unlucky not to score, hitting the crossbar 4 times) should hang their heads in shame. The most disappointing thing about it is that it didn’t surprise anyone – it’s happened too many times for that.
Performing like that is never justifiable, but it has happened probably 10 or more times this season. The team needs a massive rebuild as it is but if that is the quality the players perform at, maybe the rebuild is going to need to be bigger than everyone thought. It wouldn’t be too much of a stretch to say that West Ham have been one of, if not, the worst teams in the league as of late.
Our captain Zouma gave a big talk about having “three cup finals” remaining, but the levels they displayed today wouldn’t even be acceptable in a youth training game.