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Lazy West Ham? It’s brutal with Moyes, the players explain. Coufal had the least fat

West Ham football fans were worried about the performance of the London team in preparation for the new season. The Hammers have not won a single one of their last four matches. The start of the English Premier League is just days away, with the Hammers kicking off against Manchester City on Sunday.

Lethargic, lazy and unconvincing. This is how the London media and fan blogs evaluate West Ham’s summer pre-season matches.

The seventh team of last year’s English top flight had significant problems in the last matches and remained far below expectations in terms of performance and results. They lost to Glasgow Rangers and didn’t even beat second division teams Reading and Luton.

He brought a goalless draw from Saturday’s warm-up at the French Lens stadium.

According to captain Declan Rice, who despite speculation about his departure will lead the Hammers into the upcoming season, the “brutal” physical training under the leadership of Scottish strategist David Moyes is to blame.

“It was tough, very tough,” the England international told Tubes and Ange Golf Life.

“Coach really got us going. He’s the right old school guy. He’s always got a stopwatch in his hand. He loves a stopwatch, he loves going up hills, running up hills, double or even triple training,” Rice confided.

He and other representatives, including Tomáš Souček and Vladimír Coufal, had the first two weeks of training off.

“But when I spoke to some of the lads who were training at St Andrews and then went to France, even before that it was brutal,” added the skipper, who had to tap himself appreciatively on the shoulder.

He is said to have arrived back in training after his holiday in the best possible physical condition, despite his addiction to sweets.

“I love sweets, I can’t forgive myself, so I was a little afraid. But then it turned out that me and Coufal have the lowest percentage of body fat. I really celebrated,” laughed the 23-year-old midfielder.

According to him, despite the hard-to-digest training sessions, the morale of the team was at a high level during the summer.

“What Moyes says is true. You get up early, you work on the ball, there’s a lot of conditioning. And he prescribes really crazy runs. He calls one a horseshoe. After him, your hamstrings go completely. It’s horrible, brutal,” Rice recounted.

After the duel with Rangers, Tomáš Souček also recognized the difficulty of Moyes’ drill, a man who – in terms of physical preparation – is used to a lot.

“We’ve had a really tough series of training sessions, our legs are still very heavy and it showed on the pitch,” he explained of the 1-3 defeat to Rangers, and was sure that the hard work would eventually pay off during the season itself.

The 27-year-old native of Havlíčkov Brod was, by the way, the only player to score a goal for West Ham in the last three duels. After the stoppage, he scored just in Glasgow’s Ibrox Park and arranged a 1:1 draw with Luton with a hard header.

While footballers largely excused unsuccessful matches with fatigue, Moyes himself had no such understanding.

He publicly told the players that it was “necessary for them to significantly raise the level of their performance”. He was visibly upset especially after the matches with Rangers and Reading.

He would like to welcome some more reinforcements, as would the fans.

So far, West Ham have signed three new players. Italian striker Gianluca Scamaccio from Sassuolo, Moroccan stopper Nayef Aguerd from Rennes and English midfielder Flynn Downes from Swansea. In addition, the French goalkeeper Alphonse Areola turned the guest visit into a transfer.

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