West Ham manager blamed defensive lapses for West Ham United’s humbling 3-0 defeat to Tottenham on Saturday.

Potter’s Hammers looked pretty promising in the first-half, with a couple of dangerous counterattacks going close on a couple of times including an excellent chance that Lucas Paqueta squandered.

However, towards the end of the first period, Tottenham begun to control the game and they finally broke the deadlock not even two minutes into the first half. Pape Matar Sarr was left unmarked from Xavi Simons’ corner and powered a header into the home net.

That led to a complete Hammers meltdown, Tomas Soucek saw red for a horrific tackle on Joao Palhinha, before Lucas Bergvall and Micky Van de Ven took the game beyond West Ham’s reach.

Potter said: “I’m disappointed of course with the end result in the second half because we made one mistake. We had defended the set-pieces well and we made a mistake for the first goal.

“Obviously the red card quickly in the space of five minutes changes the dynamic because they get another goal and then we’re on the back foot. For the first half, I thought it was a decent performance. There were lots of positives in the first half and that’s the painful thing because the scoreline in the end is completely unpleasant for us.”

Unsurprisingly, Graham Potter somehow managed to find some positives despite another loss vs one of our biggest rivals.

“But at the same time there were glimpses of positivity, I thought, especially in the first half,” Potter said.

“Like I said, the second half, the game goes away from us so quickly and that’s the level and we have to learn from that. Like I said, the first half is what we have to focus on and remain positive.”

The excuses continued for Potter post match as he blamed our difficult start to the season for our low points tally so far.

“We’ve played two games at home against the World Club champions and another team that’s also in the Champions League, so there’s quality against us. Nevertheless, we’re disappointed because we wanted to do better, we wanted to have more points.”