West Ham boas David Moyes admits they failed to compete in defeat at Aston Villa on Sunday.
Villa were too strong on the day as they won comfortably 4-1.
Moyes lamented: "I've no doubt that Aston Villa had better quality in the big moments than we did and if you look at how they've been playing in the last six months or so, they've got that.
"We're still trying to build a team. We've started the season well and had lots of good things said about us but I know because I am the one who sees us every day that there are lots of things we need to do better.
"Today was a game against a side who you maybe hope we'll be competing with, but they looked like they were at a different level than we were today.
"I'm most disappointed that we lost our being tough and hard to beat and play against and we let them score easy goals. That's not what my teams do.
"Our football is improving and some of our stuff is getting better, but we can't then let that be part of it and not defend hard enough, well enough or compact enough to make it hard for the opposition to score.
"I thought we did gift them goals, and certainly the second one was very disappointing with what we did there.
"We were one-nil down at the time and we had done OK. Maybe we hadn't played as well [as them] but in the first half we had great opportunities to make chances.
"We've had that in games this season and taken those chances, like we did away to Brighton, when we've made the moments count. Today we had the chance to make those moments and we never made them.
"We got the opportunities to pick out a good cross or find somebody in the box or find someone clean or pick someone out from a corner, but we didn't do that."