David Moyes admitted that bringing on Kalvin Phillips in West Ham’s dramatic 4-3 defeat to Newcastle did not work.
In the second half West Ham were 3-1 and seemingly cruising towards victory. Moyes called upon Phillips- who arrived on loan from Manchester City in January- to shore up the midfield during a dominant spell in the game for Newcastle.
The substitution did not work as intended, as just seven minutes after being introduced, Phillips gave away a penalty, clipping Anthony Gordon inside the box. It proved to be a major turning point in the game as Newcastle went on to complete a memorable turnaround from 3-1 down to win 4-3, putting themselves up to eight in the Premier League table, just one point behind West Ham with a game in hand.
Embed from Getty ImagesMoyes said after the game: “The [second] penalty kick [awarded for Phillips’ foul on Gordon on 77 minutes] is a huge turning point, but I also thought we made a change because we felt as if they had got on top and missed a couple of chances.
“We tried to give ourselves another midfield player at 3-1 up and we didn’t want to wait for it to get to 3-2.
“Probably that decision didn’t work on the day, but more importantly I think the boy puts his foot in front of Kalvin and I don’t know how he’s supposed to see his leg.
“The penalty kick makes it 3-2 and we had been doing OK. We gave up a couple of chances before that which I didn’t like and they had started to get some control shooting down the hill, but we had another day when very few things went for us.
“We got ourselves in front and did a lot of good things.
“We looked a real threat in our attacking play for most of the day. We just couldn’t be defensively sound and let’s be fair, we’ve had that issue many times already this season.”
