Michail Antonio admits West Ham have gone ‘stale’ and hints at mental fatigue

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Jonathan Gorrie27 December 2021

Michail Antonio has admitted West Ham’s performances of late have gone “stale”.

After losing the last three games consecutively, David Moyes’ side now sit seven points off of Arsenal in fourth having played a game more than them. Tottenham, meanwhile, are a point ahead with two games in hand on their East London rivals.

Out of the Carabao Cup too, a spate of defensive injuries have undermined their excellent start to the campaign, although of course perspective must be applied.

Speaking to the club’s official website after the Boxing Day loss at home to Southampton, Antonio opened up on some of the problems.

“Over the last five weeks we’ve been a bit stale in our performances and I think that could be down to mental fatigue more than physical,” he said.

“We’re not used to playing so many games but we can’t make excuses for it. We’re professional footballers and we have to keep going.

“We’re not playing badly, we’re just not scoring goals basically. We’ll go again – we got two today, I’ve scored a goal, Saïd [Benrahma] too, and hopefully that can get us on a nice little run to get ourselves back up the league.”

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