'Frustrated and angry' - Ruben Amorim lets rip at Man Utd after throwing away lead against West Ham

United slumped to a second successive disappointing result at home following their shock 1-0 defeat against 10-man Everton in their last outing, failing to see off a West Ham side who have only won once away from home this season. Favourable results in the other mid-week games gave United the opportunity to move into fifth but they struggled to create many chances against Nuno Espirito Santo's side, with Bruno Fernandes failing to inspire the hosts and Ayden Heaven looking shaky in his first Premier League start of the season.
Amorim was in a spiky mood after the game, looking unimpressed with the questioning but also appearing to be running out of patience with his players.
Amorim told a press conference: "Frustrated, angry, that is it. After the first goal, we lost some second balls. We tried to defend all the time far from the goal. It happened long ball, they win the second ball against three guys of us so we need to be better in the second half. We are losing because of the second balls, sometimes it is not more men in front. We are really inconsistent but if you look at the goal, we have a long ball, we have everything under control, we need to do better. I always have the feeling that we have to score more goals and I'm sure about that."
The coach was particularly annoyed with his team for losing control of the game after Dalot had broken the deadlock. "We should have closed the game with the ball because the game was there to win," he told BBC Match of the Day. "I think the overall performance was not perfect. We had our moments but we lost control in the game in some minutes in the first half and in the second half, especially after the goal. The game was clearly ours to win and we had an opportunity with Cunha to finish the game off. It is really frustrating because you look at the game, you have the game under control and we didn't win."
Amorim made a surprising decision before kick off by handing 19-year-old Ayden Heaven his first league start of the season, dropping Leny Yoro following his shaky display in the recent win at Crystal Palace. But the coach then chose to haul Heaven off at half-time and replace him with Yoro. Heaven had been given an early yellow card for a rash tackle on Jarrod Bowen and had struggled against West Ham's centre-forward Callum Wilson.
"Of course it was the yellow card," Amorim explained. "And we tried to press high and leave one centre back with a striker all the time so any foul there could be a yellow. And we missed Ayden in the set pieces, so we need to be smarter when we play the game."
Goalscorer Dalot added: "Obviously we are disappointed. We have to control much more of the game, especially at Old Trafford. We cannot get as anxious as we got after the goal, we were more sloppy with possession. We had the game there, it shouldn’t be like this. We knew they would be looking for counters and set plays and it’s more our fault than credit to West Ham. We cannot drop too many points - we want to be in the top four or five, we have to be there. That’s why the disappointment is even bigger."