West Ham boss Sam Allardyce told BBC Sport: "The game was very frustrating. There is a reason why that happened, none of our centre-backs are fit. Losing James Tomkins was a big blow for us. Our coping mechanism was playing four full-backs across the back four. That has cost us three points. They did their very best but got caught out. We didn't have enough aerial threat defending corners.
"We showed great fighting spirit in the second half. We have had two games in 48 hours. We practice on the training ground how to hold onto leads. But the players forgot how to deal with West Brom's kick-off and stop them scoring. You can blame anxiety or fatigue, but you can't forget how to deal with them."
An impressive amount of excuses.