Jose Mourinho does not have long to pick up his beleaguered Manchester United squad following their latest setback at West Ham.
United’s problems deepened as they followed up a home draw with Wolves and the Carabao Cup defeat by Derby with a tepid display in a 3-1 defeat at the London Stadium.
Mourinho controversially left Alexis Sanchez out of his squad and hauled off record signing Paul Pogba with 20 minutes to go.
Now he somehow has to get a group of seemingly-disenchanted players back on side in time for a potentially pivotal visit from Valencia in the Champions League on Tuesday night.
“You’ve got to put it behind you quickly and when you have these types of results you want a game as quickly as possible,” wing-back Ashley Young told the club’s website.
“We’ve got that in a couple of days time, so we’ve got to dust ourselves off quickly and get rid of the disappointment.”
Despite the obvious gloom surrounding United, West Ham were thoroughly deserved winners.
They took the lead after five minutes through Felipe Anderson and doubled it just before half-time when Andriy Yarmolenko’s shot was deflected in by Victor Lindelof.
Substitute Marcus Rashford pulled one back but any hopes of a comeback were immediately snuffed out by Marko Arnautovic’s fourth goal of the season.
The Hammers suddenly look a world away from the side who lost their first four matches of the season, having taken seven points off Everton, Chelsea and United as well as putting eight goals past Macclesfield in the cup.
“The club and the fans deserve a win at home,” said Arnautovic. “We had a couple of bad ones before that, but in the last three games we have been brilliant.
“We needed to do our jobs and we did it excellently. That’s why we deserved the win.”
