Slaven Bilic unhappy with West Ham's first half display in defeat to Leicester

West Ham manager Slaven Bilic admits his side’s poor first half performance was the reason behind their 2-1 home defeat to Leicester on Saturday.

The Hammers, fresh from their shock opening day win at Arsenal, failed to find the same fluency shown at the Emirates Stadium last Sunday and were undone by two first half goals from Shinji Okazaki and Riyad Mahrez. 

Summer signing Dimitri Payet gave West Ham hope of an unlikely comeback, scoring his first goal for the club 10 minutes after the interval. 

The hosts were unable to muster an equaliser however, and Bilic was left to rue a costly opening 45 minutes.

“It’s a big disappointment, but that just shows how hard the Premier League is. After the good performance against Arsenal, we were hoping that we were going to get three points here against Leicester because we play at home,” Bilic said. 

“We could have got a point at the end, but we lost the game in the first half. We started well, but after 10-15 minutes, they were quicker than us. They had pace, aggression and were winning easy headers and the second balls. They were much livelier.”

Bilic once again included Reece Oxford in his starting line-up, following the 16-year-old’s outstanding display in the midfield against Arsenal last weekend.

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But the youngster failed to reproduce his impressive performance and was withdrawn at half time, with debutant Pedro Obiang replacing him.

Bilic refused to lay any blame with Oxford however, and insists his decision was simply tactical. 

“It was not down to Reece or his bad performance. I just wanted Pedro to bring much quicker passing, which we seemed to do in the second half and it put us in a position to hurt them more,” he added.

“We scored the goal and I hope if we continue like that we can create more chances. We had a couple, but we didn’t score. We are very disappointed.”

West Ham's miserable afternoon was compounded when goalkeeper Adrian was sent off in stoppage for a high boot on Leicester forward Jamie Vardy.

“On Adrian, it was a fair sending off, but it is quite obvious that he didn’t mean to do it. He was just following the ball and he was not aware a player was there,” Bilic said. 

“We should have a major role in his punishment. There’s a big difference between whether the player meant to do it or that it was an accident. Adrian simply didn’t mean to do it.”

When asked whether the club would appeal referee Anthony Taylor’s decision, Bilic added: “I have to speak to the people at the club and see what our chances will be.”