Alan Pardew shares his thoughts on this afternoon's dismal 4-1 defeat against 10-man Chelsea.
"We scored the goal and then they were reduced to ten men - and we switched off at that point. We looked pretty good at that point, but they came alive and their world-class individuals shone. We had a problem with them today.Sometimes when you go down to ten men it enhances you as you know you've got to work that bit harder - which they did. They still had ten very expensive, world-class players out on the pitch. For us, we dropped off it a little bit and went away from what we're about - the exuberance and 'positiveness' that we've had all year.
We kind of drifted out of the game unfortunately, and we gifted them goals. It was a tough afternoon for us - and a tough afternoon for West Ham fans.
The trip to Dubai was designed to lift the players. Bolton made the same trip and went on to beat Arsenal 1-0, so we were hoping the trick was going to work for us - but it didn't today. We'll have to look at ourselves as a squad - and staff - and make sure that next week we're better prepared, and ready for it.
The sending-off? I've got to be honest, I'd be lying if I said I saw the incident. It looked like it happened very quickly; I don't really want to comment on it because I'm talking blind. On our side, I think we just thought 'well okay, we can keep playing as we are and we'll be alright' - and that wasn't good enough.
Ten world-class players pulled themselves together, worked twice as hard and came away with a great victory for Chelsea. They're still an excellent team, we knew we had a challenge today.
They've had a lot of criticism - some of it unfairly. But they answered their critics today - and we bore the brunt of that."
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