David Moyes hits back at West Ham fans who walked out during Arsenal thrashing

David Moyes says he understands fans’ frustration but insists West Ham are ‘not heading in the wrong direction’ after they were thrashed 6-0 at home by Arsenal.

Arsenal kept the pressure on their title rivals by thrashing their London rivals in their own backyard on Sunday afternoon.

After William Saliba gave them the lead after half-an-hour, the floodgates opened with a Bukayo Saka penalty and goals from Gabriel Magalhaes and Leandro Trossard putting the Gunners 4-0 up before the break.

Thousands of fans walked out of the London Stadium in disgust before Saka and Declan Rice struck in the second-half to condemn the Irons to their worst home defeat in Premier League history.

Though West Ham remain an impressive eighth in the table, with Europa League glory still on offer, there is significant pressure on Moyes, whom a lot of supporters have lost faith in.

This result, the worst Premier League home defeat in the club’s history, will not have helped the manager whose contract is up at the end of the season.

But the former Manchester United and Everton boss was keen to defend himself post-match, claiming that the players had to take equal responsibility for the result, and reminded fans that the club were in a much worst state when he joined them just over four years ago.

‘Yes, it certainly is [up there as one of the most disappointing days as West Ham manager]. It’s one of those days which you don’t want to happen very often, and it happened today,’ Moyes told Sky Sports.

‘It’s not been like my teams in the past. I’ll take a bit of time and look at it and see if I can fix it. I take the responsibility, I pick the team but the players have to take responsibility.

‘It’s really important we do those jobs really well. We will always try to be as well organised as we can be. Arsenal were very good – we mustn’t take that away. We weren’t good.’

Responding to the fans waking out, he added: ‘I’m a football supporter. I understand that. I don’t think the direction the club is heading in is the wrong direction.

‘It’s grown greatly since we came in. We were fighting relegation. We’re not fighting relegation today.

‘We were playing one of the top teams in the country who we took three points off earlier in the season so I have to say the club is in a really good place. We’ve had setbacks through the season and we’ll try and come back from this one the best we can.’

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