Michail Antonio has admitted that West Ham have become complacent in their current slump of three successive defeats.
A midweek loss to Wolves means that the Hammers have not won since beating Arsenal on January 12th, a run of form which has seen them slide down the Premier League table and away from the battle to finish as best of the rest.
Speaking to Soccer Saturday (Saturday February 2nd, Sky Sports News, 12pm) about the 3-0 loss to Wolves, Antonio said: “It pains me. I struggled to sleep that night after the game, especially the way we lost the game, no shots on target. It’s hard to take.
He added: “In hindsight, it’s just complacency. We’ve won against Arsenal, we were on a good run. The games we’ve lost are the games where people say we should win.
“Complacency creeps in because when you’re playing the top six teams you know you’re in a game. When you’re playing the team around you, you kind of feel, especially if you’ve beaten a top six team before, you’re thinking ‘we’ve beaten Arsenal so we can very likely beat this team today’.
“The things we did against Arsenal, we just don’t do against the teams around us.”
OPINION
Antonio’s comments are brutally frank, and probably not the kind of narrative Manuel Pellegrini will want his players to be propagating to the media. West Ham have been dire in recent weeks, and a far cry from the side that won four on the bounce in December, but the last thing the boss will want is for his players to be sitting down with Sky and telling everyone that they just bother turning it on against the sides around them. It’s terrible for image and morale, and if it’s true, then it’s a pretty worrying indictment of where the squad are at right now. Feeling that they can give the big clubs a run for their money, and then that they can waltz past the smaller sides in the division is going to be a surefire way for the Hammers to disappoint this season, and if they’re not careful, Antonio’s comments will be used as a stick to beat them with if their poor run continues. It’s Liverpool next for the Irons, and off the back of the winger’s revelations, even a shock win could be infuriating for fans.