West Ham United took on Aston Villa in the FA Cup third round on Friday night.
It was a tough loss to take for West Ham in the end, after we outplayed Aston Villa for the first two thirds of the FA Cup tie.
Graham Potter was announced as the new West Ham manager on Thursday, and he has already highlighted the urgent need to improve his side’s defending.
The Hammers were fantastic during the first 45 minutes at Villa Park, and we looked like a far more dangerous side than the hosts.
The players were well up for it and the performance was like night and day from the ones we saw under Julen Lopetegui.
The display at Villa Park would have given everyone involved with the Hammers a huge shot of confidence.
It was just such a shame that we failed to progress to the fourth round.
Things could have been so different in the end for West Ham, had we had a little more luck.
Ian Wright fuming after Aston Villa vs West Ham FA Cup incident
I think we were actually very unlucky to lose the game in the end.
As mentioned earlier, the players ran out of gas with around 20 minutes left to play, but the improvements were clear and obvious to see.
The turning point in the game came on the 71 minute mark when Tim Robinson inexplicably awarded Aston Villa a corner, when the ball was nowhere near touching any of West Ham’s players.
Wright ripped into the referee and his assistant for awarding a corner to Aston Villa just before they scored their equaliser, when speaking on ITV on Friday (January 10th, 10:06pm):
“Obviously the referee messing up totally with that corner. I can’t believe the referee, he’s standing there, it’s gone through a gap of people and he’s not seen it. There’s no one near it, how can you get that one wrong? Such a shame.“
Wright is spot on there – it was an appalling decision.
How can you be a professional referee and make a call that bad? It really does beggar belief.
Don’t say I didn’t warn you though. I wrote a piece yesterday highlighting how poorly equipped Tim Robinson is to referee at the very highest level.
And unfortunately, I proved to be spot on.
West Ham were unlucky to lose to Aston Villa in the FA Cup and as Ian Wright said, how on earth did the referee miss that really simple call?
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