Football
9y

Sam Allardyce rues West Ham's failures to defend set pieces

West Ham boss Sam Allardyce rued his side's inability to deal with set pieces as they fell 3-1 at home to Crystal Palace.

Enner Valencia's first Premier League goal in four months reduced the deficit for West Ham, but the defeat means Allardyce has now only seen his side win one of their last 10 league outings.

Crystal Palace opened the scoring as Glenn Murray rose to head home a corner, and West Ham were two behind as Scott Dann did the same after half-time.

Murray scored his second by redirecting a free-kick, meaning all of Palace's goals came from set pieces, something Allardyce said his team had prepared to handle.

"We spent a long time looking at Palace's set plays and 50 percent of their goals this season came from them," he said.

"So you know how dangerous they are, they put a good ball in and have five or six big players that attack the ball. But we were setting out our plan to compete with that.

"Even though Palace were better than us on the day we lost on that tactic alone and that is really disappointing.

"You concede one then you give Palace credit. When you concede one that is our fault. That is something we should have done better on."

Murray was eventually sent off for a second yellow card, but Allardyce felt he had been lucky to remain on the pitch for as long as he did.

The West Ham boss also lambasted Mile Jedinak for a late elbow to Diafra Sakho.

Information from Press Association was used in this report.

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