PSelf-Inflicted Sabotage at the London Stadium

 

There is a unique brand of misery reserved exclusively for West Ham United, where a 3-2 defeat somehow manages to flatter us.

Glance at the scoreline and you might imagine a thrilling, end-to-end Championship classic, complete with late drama and a heroic comeback. Don't be fooled. The reality was a first-half horror show so utterly dreadful that the game was effectively over before most of the East Stand had settled into their seats.

Once again, our fatal flaw was exposed in all its miserable glory: the slow start. We ambled onto the pitch with all the urgency of a Sunday afternoon stroll, allowing Southampton to slice through our defence with barely a second thought. Two minutes in, we were a goal down. Eleven minutes in, it was two. By the time Lewis Dobbin rolled in their third on 34 minutes, Nuno's iceberg tactics looked less like a masterclass in controlled patience and more like a navigation plan drawn up by the captain of the Titanic.

The scoreline flatters us enormously. Kyle Walker-Peters helped give us a foothold in the game, while Tomáš Souček's stoppage-time strike added a respectable-looking coat of paint to what was, for long periods, a thoroughly shoddy performance. Southampton had done the hard work early and spent much of the afternoon looking perfectly comfortable with their handiwork.

And that is what makes this defeat so infuriating. We had the opportunity to build on August's cup triumph, carry some momentum into the league campaign and give ourselves something to feel positive about. Instead, we gifted Southampton three points through sheer lethargy and spent the rest of the afternoon trying to undo the damage.

In my opinion, the only team capable of properly beating West Ham this season is West Ham. Though, to be fair, the referee seemed quite happy to lend a hand.

If we're serious about putting ourselves in the promotion picture, this sort of nonsense has to stop. You cannot spend the first half handing the opposition a three-goal head start and then expect a late flurry of activity to rescue the afternoon. Football doesn't work like that, even if West Ham occasionally seem determined to test the theory.

The worrying thing is that this wasn't some freak accident. We've seen the slow starts, the defensive lapses and the inexplicable spells of inactivity before. At some point, lessons have to be learned rather than simply filed away under Things West Ham Really Ought to Stop Doing.

Southampton didn't need to perform miracles. We practically did their job for them.

Three goals conceded, three points surrendered and a perfectly good opportunity wasted. If this is going to be a promotion campaign rather than another extended exercise in emotional endurance, we'd better start turning up from the first whistle.

Because at this rate, we'll have shot ourselves in both feet before we've even left the starting blocks.