West Ham United Fan View: 3 talking points from the Brighton nightmare

West Ham 0-3 Brighton. Another game, another terrible performance. Here are three talking points from the game…

How often will we start slow?

Once again, we started the game poorly and we were punished. We have seen West Ham allow the opposition to have a good start to the game far too many times. The opposition will have good chances early on, as Brighton did, and the game is a struggle for us from then on. It’s inevitable that we will always be in for a tough game.

READ MORE: West Ham Fan View: Will any Hammers’ player make England’s World Cup squad?

We have scored first on three occasions this season from a total of nine games. But from two of those three games, our goals came after the 70th minute. This is a very poor record and we find it incredibly difficult to come back and win once we concede first. It wasn’t until the 20th minute that we showed signs of coming back into the game but as Gary Neville said at half-time, you can’t go missing for 20 minutes in football.

Can Slaven Bilic ever get the best out of Javier Hernandez?

There is no doubt that Javier Hernandez has struggled since signing for West Ham. He has only scored 3 goals this season and it’s hard to see Bilic getting the best out of him. Bilic has played Hernandez up front by himself, with Carroll, and on the left-wing but nothing has worked. We even saw Cheikhou Kouyate play up front alongside Hernandez near the end of the first-half! We all know how good Hernandez can be and we need a manager that can shape an attack to help Hernandez score plenty of goals.

READ MORE: West Ham Fan View: Are there any reasons to be optimistic?

Our other big signing this summer, Marko Arnautovic, had another poor performance. He has not lived up to his price tag and it’s hard to say what his contribution was tonight. His final ball was disappointing and there was little intensity shown by him for the majority of the game. Is it time for Arnautovic to be dropped? Who replaces him?

Slaven Bilic has to go

You could have made a case for Bilic to be sacked at various points during last season. He probably should have gone in the summer. But he certainly has to go now. Today’s starting line-up was the strongest that it has been in a while yet there were no signs of this in our performance.

It’s no surprise that the team were booed off the pitch at half-time. We are putting in poor performances every single week, the same mistakes are being repeated constantly and results have been appalling for far too long. There appears to be little confidence in the team and it does not look like Bilic can turn this around. How many more ‘must win’ games can Bilic have? He has to be replaced before our season gets even worse.