David Moyes blamed the Premier League scheduling after watching his West Ham side suffer the heaviest defeat of his regime at Fulham on Sunday afternoon.
The Hammers were thrashed 5-0 by Marco Silva’s rampant side, who climbed into the top half of the table with their second victory by that scoreline in the space of five days.
Moyes’s men had themselves enjoyed a fine result in midweek, winning 2-1 away at Tottenham. The Scot, however, was frustrated that that match was played on Thursday night rather than earlier in the week, given his team have been dealing with a Thursday-Sunday schedule for much of the season due to their Europa League commitments.
"I think the carry over from the game, we used up too much energy in midweek,” Moyes said, when asked how he explained his side’s drop-off from their excellent second-half show at Spurs. “We weren’t able to get ourselves back. Another Thursday fixture, Fulham had a Wednesday fixture. No excuse for the result but it played a part in it.
"We’ve not usually had to try and play all the same players every Thursday. It’s the level of the game. We could have easily had our game on the Wednesday, couldn’t we? And we didn’t, we had it on the Thursday.”
Fatigue is a major worry for Moyes, whose side face vital contests in each of the next two midweeks as well, first hosting Freiburg in the Europa League on Thursday and then travelling to Liverpool in the Carabao Cup quarter-final six days later, with a league game against Wolves sandwiched in between.
With no obvious way to prioritise those fixtures, the Irons boss admits he is finding ways of rotating his squad a challenge.
“I’m struggling to do it with the time,” he added. “We just can’t do it with the scheduling we’ve got. Lucas Paqueta’s been carrying a bit of an injury, there’s been illness in the camp that we’ve had to suffer through for the last day or two.
“[The result] is disappointing but we’ve had two difficult away games this week, three points from the two games is not a bad return.”
