West Ham ace Alphonse Areola will be fuming with defenders after footage
Alphonse Areola will be fuming with his West Ham teammates after watching the replay of Eintracht Frankfurt’s winning goal at the London Stadium.
David Moyes’ side lost 2-1 in the first leg of their Europa League semi-final after two strikes early into both halves from the Bundesliga side.
The Hammers defenders clearly hadn’t switched on yet after halftime with every single of them being able to do better for the decisive goal.
Areola makes a brilliant save but not one of the Irons defenders reacts – disgraceful defending considering the magnitude of the game.
What on earth are Kurt Zouma and Aaron Cresswell doing in the middle of the box? As a matter of fact, not one defender tracks a run or does anything notable to stop the goal.
They were caught ball watching and must have expected the first shot to have gone in which is simply not good enough at this level.
All to play for.
It isn’t all doom and gloom with the result at the London Stadium only representing halftime in the tie.
West Ham have to go over to Germany and if their track record is anything to go by – they have a good chance of overturning the deficit.
Moyes’ side has done it before against Sevilla and didn’t quite come back against Lyon but completely blew them out of the water away from home which will give them huge confidence.
Not to mention their performance against Frankfurt. Despite losing, the Hammers had the better of the game and will be gutted they didn’t capitalise on their chances.
Jarrod Bowen hit the woodwork twice and on another day, they go in and make the scoreline very different.
It was the fine margins in bot boxes that the Irons need to fix ahead of the second leg. Otherwise, it was a good performance from the team – one that will give them huge confidence that they can still reach the final.
In other West Ham news, Carlton Cole and Joe Cole were left in awe of rarely seen Hammer’s Europa League displays.
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