Jarrod Bowen says West Ham United need to use the feeling of Wednesday’s 5-1 defeat to Newcastle United as motivation for bouncing back at Fulham on Saturday.
The Hammers gave the Mapgies a helping hand in their London Stadium success, with defensive errors playing their part as the visitors ran away with the contest in the second period.
Bowen conceded that there were few positives to take from a chastening night in east London but said that focus has to switch to Craven Cottage from Thursday morning.
The Irons could still climb as high as 12th in the table should they pick up three points at the Cottagers with Bowen determined to show the better side of the team’s game on that occasion.
“To concede five in a Premier League game, you’ve shot yourself in the foot straight away,” he admitted.
“We gave them two easy goals to start with, but got a goal back and we thought in the second half we could get on the front foot and get after them.
“Of course when they get the third goal, coming back with two goals is difficult, but you have to keep fighting. These fans demand so much more than giving up on a football pitch and we demand more of ourselves too.
“It’s criminal to concede two more goals on top of it. It wasn’t a good performance, it wasn’t a good result, we accept that and hopefully on Saturday we can put it right.”
Bowen admitted that both the result and performance were unacceptable on Wednesday and vowed that both will see an uplift at the weekend.
“It’s an embarrassing performance to lose 5-1 at home,” he added. “We accept that, we take it on the chin because we’re out there playing. It was a massive game, we knew it was a massive game. We knew how important it was and it’s disappointing.
“It’s going to hurt tonight and we’ve got to let it hurt because we’ve got another game on Saturday and we want to turn that hurt into joy.
“Thursday is a new day in preparation for Saturday, where I know our fans will travel in numbers and make a great noise behind the goal. It’s about us showing a performance, winning the game and bouncing back from this.”
