West Ham United defender Kurt Zouma has been listening to his manager David Moyes regarding our opposition too much I reckon.
Kurt Zouma was at the heart of our defence for the Manchester United vs West Ham clash at Old Trafford yesterday, as David Moyes watched on forlornly from the sidelines.
The Hammers were beaten comfortably in the end, with Man United running out as 3-0 winners. The boys actually played some decent stuff during the match, but they were not clinical enough inside the final third, and it just seemed to me like there was no belief from anyone that they could win the game.
Before the match, Moyes spoke to reporters, and didn’t stop telling everyone in the room how difficult it is to go to Old Trafford and get a result (WHUFC.com).
It was just so defeatist from Moyes – something that he does every single time we play one of the historical big boys away from home. It’s not good enough, and certainly isn’t the mentality I want to be hearing from my manager.
The worst thing is, that mentality creeps into the players. You can see it play out on the pitch, and Zouma’s latest comments prove exactly that to me…
Kurt Zouma fell into the same pathetic trap as David Moyes
The 29-year-old Hammers skipper spoke to reporters after yesterday’s 3-0 loss to Manchester United.
And Zouma followed Moyes’s narrative by suggesting that Old Trafford is a tough place to come and get a result, as quoted by WHUFC.com:
“They were more clinical. We had a few chances to score but we couldn’t. It happens in football, especially at this place, which is a tough one to come to.”
If the club captain and the manager have that attitude before the match, then what chance do we have!
I honestly believe that Moyes’s pre-game rhetoric has seeped into the players. I’m sorry but Old Trafford just isn’t a tough place to come to any more. If anything, it’s a place where teams quite like to go now, because they genuinely think they can beat Man United.
In the Premier League this season, Man United have drawn one and lost four games at home. Manchester City, Bournemouth, Crystal Palace and Brighton have all beaten them at Old Trafford, whilst Nottingham Forest and Brentford were unlucky not to win after having led the matches before conceding late goals.
Meanwhile, they’ve lost home games against Galatasaray and Bayern Munich in the Champions League and Newcastle in the Carabao Cup.
Look at those results. How can you be aware of those teams going to Old Trafford and winning, and then talking about how hard it is to turn them over on their own patch? Manchester United are not the same team any more. Nobody fears going up there to play them.
Moyes has a really bad habit of preparing his side to play against the repuation of the badge and the history of a club rather than their current standing in the game.
Kurt Zouma clearly fell into the same trap as David Moyes before the match, and I think it played a real part in our defeat, because there just wasn’t enough belief on display from the players that they were actually capable of winning the game.
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