West Ham in crisis mode as wait for a win (and even a goal) ticks up with defeat at Nottingham Forest

Eight games without a victory, five hours without a goal and with time ticking down on David Moyes’s contract, West Ham are now just about officially in crisis.

A trip to Nottingham Forest was supposed to mark the start of a winnable run, when Moyes’s men could right the wrongs of recent weeks and breathe fresh life into what, as recently as the turn of the year, had looked a league campaign full of promise.

Instead, the Hammers boss ended the afternoon serenaded by chants of ‘sacked in the morning’, a ‘Moyes Out’ banner unveiled in the away end after his side had been broken by Taiwo Awoniyi’s strike on the stroke of half-time and polished off by Callum Hudson-Odoi’s stoppage-time clincher.

Things are not quite desperate enough to warrant a mid-season split, the Irons still eighth and with a return to Europe a month away, but with co-chairman David Sullivan watching on, Moyes’s hand at the negotiating table is growing ever weaker. To top it off, Kalvin Phillips, a player the Scot has sought for years, was sent off for two quickfire yellows to continue what must be one of the most ill-fated loan spells in history. Frank Spencer caught more breaks.

West Ham were not alone in searching desperately for form coming into this fixture, the two teams beyond Valentine’s Day without a league victory between them. Forest had at least made progress in the FA Cup, but even that required successive replays against lower league opposition, the latter settled only on spot-kicks.

Moyes welcomed Michail Antonio back from the knee injury that has kept him sidelined since November. The Jamaican fit to start against the club where, during a television appearance in his absence, he had admitted to playing the best football of his career. Applauded by all corner of the City Ground following his second-half substitution, the contrast with the away end’s angry-fisted response at full-time was stark.

Ben Johnson, whose deployment on the left-wing in recent weeks has made the Hammers’s attacking woes clear, was the man to make way and intriguingly, having complained of his side’s lack of physical stature in the aftermath of their Arsenal hammering, Moyes axed the giant Tomas Soucek, too, with Phillips recalled.

For all his team’s struggles in front of goal, it is the defensive horror shows of late that have given Moyes most cause for concern and Forest wasted no time here in cutting the visitors apart, only a superb save from Alphonse Areola denying Anthony Elanga a fifth-minute opener.

As in their dismantling at the hands of Bukayo Saka, it was open season down the Hammers left in the early exchanges, Neco Williams’s raids unchecked and Morgan Gibbs-White again forcing Areola into action with a sharp strike.

On the break, though, Antonio offered both a reminder of his threat and impotence, forging an opportunity from nothing with great strength on halfway but then bearing down on goal without conviction and seeing his shot blocked by the excellent Murillo.

Stalemate at the break would have been a fair reflection of the first-half’s play, but into the fifth-minute of stoppage time the home side broke through. Awoniyi was too strong for Nayef Aguerd, who was shrugged off and rolled with ease, before the Forest No9 poked beyond Areola.

Neither side truly seized the game after the break, but with Moyes preparing changes from a bench hardly blessed with attacking quality, hopes of a comeback were wrecked. Phillips, cautioned only minutes earlier for his part in a tussle with Nicolas Dominguez, found Gibbs-White too sharp, catching the playmaker and earning an early departure.

The game ought to have been settled twice, first when Forest were somehow denied a spot-kick for substitute Maxwel Cornet’s clear foul on Williams and then again when Elanga spooned over the bar. Hudson-Odoi at last put the Hammers out of their misery, piling plenty more of it upon Moyes.