Head coach Steve Cooper blasted an “unacceptable” second half capitulation as Nottingham Forest were thumped 4-0 by West Ham United.
The Reds shot themselves in the foot with their collapse after Danny Ings had opened the scoring in the 70th minute. Ings made it a quickfire double by netting again three minutes later, and it became four in the space of quarter of an hour as Declan Rice and Michail Antonio made sure of the three points for the hosts.
Defeat at the London Stadium continued Forest’s dismal form on the road, with just six points taken and three goals scored this season. And it meant their cushion to the bottom three has been narrowed to four points with 14 games to go.
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“It’s really, really disappointing. West Ham had a lot of set-pieces and more territory than us in the first half, but I never felt in great danger of conceding,” said Cooper. “I thought we handled that pretty well; remember, we’re away from home and you want to play your way into the game.
“We spoke about some things at half-time. I actually after the first minute or so, we started the second half well.
“We played our way into the game and got the momentum. You could feel the tension in the stadium; we talked about that, and we were trying to get it to turn in our favour.
“And then we went 1-0 down. It was a disappointing goal from our point of view, but then what happened between the first and the third goal, particularly, was something which is quite difficult to comprehend at the moment.
“It was unacceptable in so many ways, and particularly from a mentality, a concentration and decision-making point of view. Because of that, the game got completely taken away from us.
“We blame nobody but ourselves. We have to face up to the problems we give ourselves.”
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