Brendan Rodgers has highlighted the huge problem David Moyes has with senior players at West Ham and it’s clear who he means.
West Ham rounded off a woeful week with their third home defeat win six days against Leicester.
The Hammers huffed and puffed but continued to look both completely toothless and painfully slow at the back.
And they paid the price with Leicester being far more clinical and economical with the ball in a 2-0 win which piled even greater pressure on Moyes.
Speculation is swirling over Moyes’ future with the usual claims and counter claims doing the rounds.
One accusation levelled at the boss by many is that he has ‘lost the dressing room’ and run out of ideas and therefore must be sacked.
As managers always do regardless, Rodgers has backed Moyes to turn things around at West Ham.
But he did at least offer a refreshingly honest assessment of the issues the Scot is struggling with in the Hammers camp.
Rodgers has highlighted the huge problem Moyes has with senior players at West Ham and it’s clear who he means.
The Leicester boss says West Ham’s problems are not just a result of bedding in a host of new signings.
Rodgers was also brutally up front in saying publicly what Moyes probably can’t – West Ham have a clutch of senior players who are in serious decline.
“Should David be given time? Absolutely,” Rodgers said of Moyes (The Independent).
“He is a top-class manager. He has taken the club from where it was a few years ago into European football, which we never would have thought was possible from where they were.
“They’ve had a big turnaround in the summer in terms of players and the adaptation takes time. A lot of new players in at a new level, plus some senior players who are on the decline. That also happens.
“But David is a top-class manager. He will be disappointed but he will go away and come back and use this time well. I have no doubt he will get them winning again.”
It is abundantly clear who the Foxes boss is referring to.
Aaron Cresswell, Tomas Soucek, Michail Antonio and Vladimir Coufal are four of the most senior players at West Ham.
And he is being kind describing them as being in decline. It has been more like a freefall from the standards they set over the last two years.
Cresswell and Antonio will both be 33 by the end of March. Indeed that quartet of senior players will have a combined age of 124 by that time.
It is showing in what is an increasingly competitive Premier League where pace and power is more important than perhaps ever before.
No amount of rest will solve that particular problem during the World Cup break. It can only be resolved in the transfer market, simple as.