Slaven Bilic knows he needs to see a greater level of consistency from his West Ham United side, after they followed an encouraging performance against Manchester United by collapsing in the FA Cup against their city rivals on Friday.
The Hammers showed a defensive compactness against the Red Devils which meant it took Jose Mourinho’s men over an hour to make their extra man count, but that solidity was absent against Manchester City.
With important Premier League assignments to follow against Crystal Palace and Middlesbrough, the boss knows West Ham need to step up again.
He said: “The same players played really well a few days ago, with ten men. We showed how we could defend as a team, even with ten men, so we have a good quality within our team.
“We have to come back from this against Palace next week.
“Always when you have a big defeat it affects confidence, but we have enough days to work, get that confidence back and be ready for Palace.”
We showed against Manchester United that we could defend as a team, even with ten men, so we have a good quality within our team
Slaven Bilic
Bilic was upset with how his team reacted to conceding the first goal to Yaya Toure’s penalty on Friday night, saying they lost their shape as they started to chase the game.
He explained: “What disappointed me the most was that after the first goal we started to chase them all over the pitch. We conceded one, then we conceded two more and it was basically all over for us.
“We gave everything but as a team it wasn’t good enough, nowhere near the performance we had against Man Utd.
“At half time we wanted to not concede more goals, at least stay at 3-0 or try to get one back, but we lost two more from set pieces and it was a really bad night for us.”