- West Ham lost 2-0 to Aston Villa on Sunday afternoon
- Jarrod Bowen says the team need to stick together
- West Ham enter the international break looking to regroup
West Ham United fell short as they lost to Aston Villa 2-0 on Sunday afternoon. The result, combined with Nottingham Forest’s win over Tottenham Hotspur, see’s the Hammers miss an opportunity and fall to one point from safety.
Nuno Espirito Santo’s team had a complete off-day. From Jean-Clair Todibo being injured in the warm-ups, to Mads Hermansen making ahis mistake for the second goal, very little went right for West Ham yesterday.
Jarrod Bowen told the club’s official website he is as disappointed as everyone with the performance, but is looking forward rather than backwards.
“I’m disappointed in the end,” Bowen said. “I don’t think we were at the level we’ve set over the last few weeks, for whatever reason that could be.
“Obviously they’re a really good side, but we’re in a good place as well. We wanted to come here and put in a better performance than what we did today, but we didn’t do that.
“We knew they’d be creative, I think even before we were trying to tell people to be alive for anything that they can do. Regardless of the goals, I think we gave up maybe too many chances in what we’ve done.
“We didn’t defend well enough as a group, as a unit, to stop them because we know what they’re good at. They want to play through the middle of us, but we didn’t do that well enough and gave up too many chances that could have gone in on another day and been even more.”
West Ham need to stick together
There was no hiding the bad feeling when Todibo’s name was taken from the team sheet after the warm-ups. In spells, West Ham did show the fight they have had in recent games, Konstantinos Mavropanos being one name to stand out, but everything else was uncharacteristic from the Hammers.
Bowen knew this, but also acknowledged they cannot let it affect them going forward.
“Yes, it was a blow, but you don’t want to look at it as an excuse and blame that for the result or the performance,” the skipper said. “I think the good thing about this group, and I spoke here when we’ve won games, is the spirit of the group and everyone champing at the bit and ready to have the opportunity. Everyone’s ready to come in whenever it is.
“We can’t get caught up using that as an excuse. We just have to face it now that we weren’t good enough for whatever reason, but we’ve done a lot to get here. We’ve played well over the last couple of months, had some good performances, good results.
“Today wasn’t that, but we can’t let heads go down too much because we’ve got too much to play for when we come back. Now we have to rest up. People that go away, go away. Then, when we come back, we have a chance to get into a semi-final in the FA Cup. Then we have big games in the Premier League.
“Sunday was a blow, a kick in the teeth, but we can’t forget what we’re all trying to achieve. It hasn’t been a great season for any of us, but we have to keep standing up to it, keep rolling our sleeves up when we come back.
“Like I said, we’ve got two home games coming up, which is really important. We’ve got to stick together.”
