West Ham boss Matt Beard has criticised his players after they were 'embarrassed' in their 8-0 defeat to Chelsea at Kingsmeadow on Sunday.

The Blues ran riot as Maren Mjelde and Beth England both helped themselves to braces in a destructive demolition of The Hammers.

And Beard refused to sugar-coat his team's performance after the match, insisting it simply was not good enough.

He said: “We’re desperately disappointed and we’re embarrassed with the score-line. It shouldn’t happen at this level but you see the top three – Chelsea, Arsenal and Manchester City – do this to a lot of teams. 

“The resource and the players they’ve got, and the players they brought off the bench when they were in complete control of the game, it’s frustrating. We shouldn’t be getting beat that way. We’ve got better players than the score-line suggests and what our performance today suggests."

West Ham have won just once in three Women's Super League games since Christmas and Beard is aware the team have been hit by injuries and players leaving on international duty.

However, he also recognises they need to bounce back quickly because they are hosting top of the table Manchester City this weekend.

“This was always going to be a tough period for us. We have struggled for confidence since we came back from Christmas," he added.

“I’ve lost Leon and Cho to Olympic qualification, and then Martha Thomas does her knee. We can’t catch a break at certain things, but the result is frustrating.

“At the end of the day, we didn’t deserve anything today. The players have got to react and respond. We can’t let this happen again.

“It doesn’t get any easier; we’ve got Man City next week. We’ve collectively, as a group, got to move forward.”

The Hammers take on Man City at the Rush Green Stadium at 3pm on Sunday and you can watch the match live on the FA Player.

There will also be a full round-up of all the weekend's WSL games immediately after the conclusion of the day's games.