Moyes defends team selection after Bees beat Hammers

West Ham boss David Moyes defended his decision to make nine changes to his side against Brentford.

The Hammers were comfortably beaten 2-0 after errors by their defence.

They lost the ball on the edge of their box for Bryan Mbeumo’s opening goal and then struggled to cope with Mathias Jensen’s long throws, which led to Yoane Wissa making it 2-0.

“We were soft, easy to play against, and let’s be fair at 0-0 there is not an awful lot happening and then we give away a goal,” Moyes said.

“You can lose a goal to a long throw here, and although we haven’t had a lot of time to prepare, we did a lot on trying to defend long throws – but you would not have thought so by watching it today.

“So I am so disappointed with the players that they didn’t deal with it much better. They are senior players who can take responsibility and have to take leadership on the field, and I didn’t feel they did on two or three of the throw-ins that came in.”

Moyes felt he had no option but to change his side after victory against Manchester United last Sunday was followed by a 2-1 win in the first leg of the Europa Conference League semi-final against AZ Alkmaar on Thursday.

The Hammers squad will fly to the Netherlands on Wednesday for the second leg.

Moyes said: “We’ve had nine games in April, so you can’t expect me or any other manager to keep rolling the same players out.

“Today was an opportunity and we earnt the right because we beat Man United last week, but I expected players who come in to show me they should be ones that are wearing the jersey.”