West ham were fantastic and clearly benefited from having competitive games. us on the other hand started as if it was still pre season. Really poor but at least they have all been woken up

Compare it to our performance 7 days ago...

We just had an absolute mare out there today, it has nothing to do with fitness.

At least Sanchez will be up and raring to go next weekend.

We were lacking match fitness and westham played 8 games this season already

We looked absoloutly knackered.

Well done to west ham they deserved it.

I don't think it was just a lack of fitness.

Our play is so narrow and predictable at times.

We continue to play with central midfielders out wide and pretty much have all our play in-front of their defence - allowing them to reorganise their defence and blockade the box.
Then we either have all our players converge in the centre and lose the ball, or switch it out to the full-backs or our one winger, Chamberlain, and hope they can create something.
To be fair, Chamberlain is the sort of player who can make something out of nothing, but we shouldn't have to be so reliant on him.

http://m.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/23644714

That was 2 years ago. After that we spent majority of the season top of the league and ended our 9 year trophy drought

Yeh West Ham were very impressive today, especially the kid Oxford.

Palace is going to tough

Zara, bolaisi will make it tough

I really don't think it was a lack of fitness. Too many players were still in pre-season mode, ambling around, no urgency in the play.

It was lack of width, invention and someone needs to tell Ramsey if he's playing in a two in front of the defence he can't go wandering all around the pitch leaving Coquelin on his own. Why Wenger changed the Coq-Santi axis is beyond me.

Wenger has been messing around for a few seasons with his obsession of midfielders

It has nothing to do with pre seaaon. It's something we do every season with games against teams wr should beat. Ee always look like we just need to show up and win instead of forcing every result. Nothing has changed unfortunately and nothing will in terms of our fortunes

Sick of the sight of Mr. Aaron allaboutme Ramsey
Doesn't deserve his place on the team.

The talent gap is getting smaller between the prem league clubs. West Ham deserve some credit.

Master creator

Sorry disagree, we usually always finish the last 20-30 mins full of energy. The push just wasn't there, we looked very tired and out of ideas. We brought width with Ox on the right, we blowing out of air fast. Thro can on for 30 plus mins to add width.

Players thought they only had to turn up to win. That was the problem. They believe the hype and paid. Performance was similar to the Monaco game albeit we created fak all today.

BOSS
That has been the narrative for so many years now. It is nothing new really.