Declan Rice unhappy with display as West Ham ‘win ugly’ v Leeds
Declan Rice was unhappy with the West Ham performance as they defeated Leeds 2-0 at the London Stadium on Monday evening.
The Hammers were far from their best in the clash. Jesse Lingard tapped in after seeing his penalty saved, and Craig Dawson added a second before half-time.
Despite moving back up to fifth, Rice was far from satisfied.
Speaking to Sky Sports, the skipper claimed his side started slowly in the first half. He said: “I’m disappointed with the performance. At Man City we were brave, took the ball, played well, had loads of chances, a real performance.
“I think now we’re starting to learn to win ugly. You know, we didn’t play the best but grinded out the result, we’ve got a real solidity about us and long may that continue.
“After the first ten minutes we said to each other on the pitch we need to wake up here, they could be two goals up. Where we’re trying to push for at the end of the season, if that would have been one or two-nil it would have been hard to come back from.”
Winning ugly
It was far from our best display this season, but the main thing is we got the job done. The West Ham of old would have been defeated tonight in a game that we really needed to win.
Leeds may feel hard-done-by after an early VAR intervention, but they had other chances. Patrick Bamford was very wasteful in front of goal, squandering two or three good chances to get his side on the scoreboard. He’ll be hoping Gareth Southgate wasn’t watching.
One man who may have caught the England boss’ eye is Lingard. In six matches for West Ham, the attacker has four goals, one assist and has won two penalties. He looked good in the first half, playing some nice one and two touch football with Said Benrahma.
As Rice said, we did win ugly. But winning ugly is an art in itself. Something that previous Hammers sides haven’t been very good at. We’re not two points behind fourth-placed Chelsea with a game in hand. It’s a very strong position to be in and the players should be proud of their efforts.
We still have to face Everton, Leicester and Chelsea at home, so it’s in our hands if we want to finish in the European places. Let’s just hope we perform better than we have this evening, though.
In other West Ham news, here are the player ratings for our clash with Leeds.