Michail Antonio reacts to ‘very disappointing’ West Ham United loss v Aston Villa
Michail Antonio has reacted to the 4-1 West Ham defeat against Aston Villa, sharing his disappointment and claiming that the team simply didn’t perform.
The striker praised their opponents and the season they have had so far but claimed the Hammers want to go into every game with the intention of securing all three points.
Antonio slammed the silly mistakes made by his team, with the passing specifically criticised, but he ultimately chalked it up to a bad day at the office for the East London club.
Speaking on the Footballer’s Football Podcast [24 October], Antonio shared: “Very disappointing to be fair. Every game we go into we want three points. I’m going to be frank and honest, to be fair we didn’t really turn up.
“As a team, it wasn’t our best game. Obviously, Villa are flying right now, the football that they’re playing is quality.
“It’s just one of those things where we just didn’t turn up as a team, we were making a lot of mistakes, our passes weren’t coming off, we just have to put it down to a bad day at the office.
“Obviously, we’re all human, we’ve had a great start to the season, so hopefully, we can turn that around for next week.”
A bad day at the office
Antonio is right, it was a poor performance from David Moyes’ side. The passing was off, that final ball was always slightly overhit or too short, the creativity wasn’t there and the defence was torn apart far too easily.
Chalking it down to a bad day at the office is fine, that’s what it was, but the Hammers can’t afford to have many more days quite as poor as this one if they want to keep up their strong start to the season and challenge at the top end of each competition they are involved in.
Amid the usual quotes surrounding a poor performance being a one-off, the squad must make sure there is some accountability. They must take the blame for simply not being good enough and work to rectify those mistakes.
If they all follow Antonio’s lead of saying “Yeah well it was just one of those days”, the mistakes can easily become ingrained in their average performances, and that is something Moyes and his staff cannot allow to happen.
In other West Ham news, the transfer team must be on red alert after a Fabrizio Romano update.