Declan Rice makes honest West Ham admission after Brentford setback
Declan Rice has admitted that he and West Ham have yet to acclimatize to the Thursday to Sunday turnaround.
After facing Rapid Vienna at home soil in the Europa League the Hammers were back in action three days later in the Premier League. And while they managed to brush aside Rapid, they could not get to grips with Brentford.
In fact had Brentford been more clinical in the first half the Premier League new boys would have been out of sight. Instead West Ham found themselves just 1-0 down.
However, after an improved second-half display they equalised and created a number of chances before Yoane Wissa netted in stoppage time for the visitors.
And afterwards England midfielder Rice admitted he and his team-mates have yet to cope with the schedule.
“We’re adapting to it,” he told WHUTV. “For me, it’s my first time doing it, and you realise how important it is to look after your body with all the games. You’re playing Thursday and Sunday, and you’re training and recovering and playing again – it’s non-stop.
“This is what we need. We’re footballers. We love being out there, playing, just today we didn’t get that result, but I thought we did enough to get something from the game.
“We’ve got a massive squad which the manager uses throughout the cup games, the Europa League and the Premier League.
“Now, we’re going into another international break. Some of the lads will go away, and some will stay and get some rest.”
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“We’ll be ready to go again when games resume,” added the 22-year-old.
“I’m devastated. Last week it was the other way around – we scored the winner late on – and I knew what a feeling that was, but to concede that late today was horrible.
“It was a poor start to the game for us, something we don’t usually actually do, especially this season and last season. To be fair, they could have been one or two up in the first 10 minutes and we had to wake up.
“Obviously, they scored and went 1-0 up, but we just missed too many chances today. We had so many chances and it just seemed like we weren’t going to score at all.”
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