West Ham 0-2 Manchester United: Three things we learnt

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West Ham were hugely disadvantaged by the officials

The Hammers have been steadily improving under Slaven Bilic after a poor start to the season, but they didn’t stand a chance this afternoon. Sofiane Feghouli was wrongly sent off in the first half and that provided the side with a massive disadvantage. Mike Dean has sent off five players this season, more than any other official and his reputation of wanting to be the centre of attention certainly went against West Ham this afternoon. They were further disadvantaged by Ibrahimovic’s clear offside goal not being ruled out by the assistant referee. It put the game beyond doubt and made it impossible for the home side to take anything from the match.

If there was any fixture that you wouldn’t have wanted to be down to ten men at such an early stage, it would have been this one at the end of the Christmas period. The players were tired and couldn’t make up the shortfall for an entire match. West Ham battled hard and nearly went ahead through Michail Antonio, but the longer the game went on, the less they could compete with one less player. Bilic perhaps asked his players to press too much after the sending off, a tactic that was always going to lead to an impossible last 15 minutes for the side. They competed well, but a defeat was inevitable as soon as Feghouli saw red.