Blackburn manager Mark Hughes shares his thoughts on yesterday's defeat at West Ham ...
I think in the first half we didn’t perform as we know we can. Obviously, we had a few changes today and a few senior players were missing. We banged the drum before the game about having a fast start and trying to dictate to West Ham given their current circumstances, but it didn’t really happen.Second half, I thought we were a lot better in that respect and asked a lot more questions of West Ham, but the second goal, when we were very much on top at that stage, has absolutely taken the wind out of our sails and the game was over from that point.
Today the team was a little bit lightweight, we lost the power of Jason Roberts very early on in the game, which I think affected our game-plan and it’s been a disappointing day.
From coming here with high hopes of getting something out of the game, we’ve lost it and we’ve lost Roberts for a significant amount of time, so not a great day in the office.
West Ham nervous? I think so. You saw there was a little bit of apprehension in their play in the second half when we tried to get back into the game. First half we didn’t really ask enough of them to really test their nerve and their mettle. But second half, I thought we did.
Obviously, we needed to score fairly early in the first half and then maybe there may have been a different outcome. Second half, we were better, but the first half has lost us the game.
The second goal? The guys on TV have said it should have been a goal-kick – I wasn’t aware of that. I was more upset with the fact that we’ve conceded from a set-play again when we need to be better in that respect.
We’ve lost too many goals from set-plays of late. At that point, as I said, we were in control of the game; we could very easily have got back on level terms, but the second goal has killed us.
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