Frustrated Joe Hart believes West Ham can’t expect to get their season back on track until Slave Bilic has drilled his charges to cut out sloppy passages of play.
Hammers keeper Hart reckons silly mistakes led to their downfall at home to Tottenham on Saturday as they suffered a 3-2 defeat at the London Stadium.
But West Ham enjoyed a positive if unfruitful opening half hour before the north London outfit came into their own and found themselves 3-0 up after an hour.
Harry Kane struck twice and Christian Eriksen made it three before the home side redoubled their efforts. Chicharito and Cheikhou Kouyate brought some respectability to the scoreline but the Hammers couldn’t quite draw level.
Now Hart wants his team-mates to draw on the fighting spirit shown from their late rally when they face Swansea City at home on Saturday.
He told the club’s website: “We had two clean sheets going into this one, but it seems that lapses in concentration are killing us. You can isolate nearly every single goal and the frustrating thing is that it’s not necessarily quality that’s beating us, it’s sloppy play and that gets punished.
“I don’t think Spurs will feel they came here and pumped us. They’re one of the best teams in the league and we’ve given them a fight for the whole game.
“Whilst it was 0-0 I felt we were the stronger team. We’ve got to learn from our mistakes and if we learn from it it’s not a problem. We’ve got Swansea next week and we need to win it for the importance of the club, we need to win for the manager, and we need to win it to give us a good feeling going into the international break.”
Meanwhile, boss Bilic concurs with Hart’s assessment of the defeat. He said: “In the first half hour we were playing good, we were not giving them space between the lines, in the pockets, and we took a lot of balls from them in good areas
“Up until the first goal it was a very even game. I spoke to the lads and we can talk about the quality of crosses after the red card for Aurier when we had the advantage down the wings.
“We did one brilliant cross and it was the goal from Cheikhou, but we were in those positions ten times. We can talk about that bit of quality, but apart from that the only period of the game that I am disappointed about is after we conceded the first goal. In those ten minutes, suddenly from being on top of the game, closing them down and being on the front foot, we weren’t. First goal is credit to them, but the second goal is our sloppiness rather than brilliant movement.”