Tomas Soucek admits that West Ham “have to do better” following Crystal Palace defeat.

A flat, tired, and uninspiring forward handed Crystal Palace an easy win at the London Stadium. Apart from a few exceptions, none of the players looked up to the task.

The defeat puts the Hammers below their South London counterparts, leaving Tomas Soucek to concede that the performance wasn’t good enough.

“We have to do better,” he confessed to the official site. “Obviously, we have a few players missing at the moment, especially in attacking areas, but we didn’t create many chances at all.”

“Their first goal was tough to take. I think both teams could’ve done better in the first half, and we’d discussed things going into the second period. We knew that first goal could be really important, so it was really frustrating when they scored so quickly after half-time.”

“We were full of positive emotions after the win the other night, and today is quite the opposite. But we’ll keep working, and hopefully we can come back stronger.”

Despite this, Soucek acknowledges that things will take time to get right under Graham Potter, with him now getting a proper chance to implement his philosophy after a busy start.

“The message [from Potter] has been clear, about how we can’t change everything straight away, and that it is a process. But, we still have to be motivated for the challenge, and to have the mentality to fight for every point in every game.”

“The fans have always been amazing, and I have such good memories of when they were travelling all over Europe to support us. That’s where we want to get back to, and we have to fight to do that.”

“We have some time in training now, and I think we’ll see during the week what the manager’s main principles are. We need to keep going, and keep practicing, and I’m hopeful we’ll get there.”