Hammers house of horrors as Moyes rues lapses in defence

AS Alexander Isak lifted Newcastle's fourth goal into an empty net, Lukasz Fabianski stood next to him, 30 yards from the goal he should have been defending, hands on hips, wearing the bemused face of a man just awoken at the last stop on a train line: How on earth did I get here?"

- Malik Ouzia

It has seldom been easy to feel too much sympathy for David Moyes's predicament this season, given most managers would kill for either the financial backing he received last summer, or that he has had from the West Ham board. But as he, too, watched in disbelief from his technical area, you could not begrudge him wondering the same thing.

Because, quite frankly, who would be a manager? Moyes must ultimately wear the blame for the grim decline of his team and probably ought to have been ousted at the start of the World Cup break but, more than any other in a campaign littered with them, this was a debacle for which his players bore responsibility.

Individual errors are often the symptom, not the cause, of a collective failure orchestrated, inevitably, by the man in charge, but, seriously, what chance have you got when your defenders are reeling them off like this? Must you remind your German international full-back, signed from Paris Saint-Germain no less, that corners are not clever things to needlessly give away?