West Ham United suffer pre-season loss to Sydney FC

West Ham United's pre-season preparations have continued with a 3-1 loss to Sydney FC at the Westpac Stadium.

The hosts broke the deadlock in just the third minute as West Ham failed to respond to a fast counter-attack, which allowed Ali Abbas to play in Corey Gameiro, who took advantage of the space on offer to fire past Adrian.

© Getty Images

West Ham continued to struggle to find any fluency to their play, and they paid the price midway through the first half as Sydney doubled their lead when Alex Brosque headed in Bernie Ibini-Isei's inviting cross.

Aaron Creswell came closest to pulling a goal back prior to the interval after exchanging passes with Carlton Cole, but the former Ipswich Town full-back failed to find the target with a powerful volley.

The Hammers were gifted a fortunate goal in the early stages of the second half when a drilled effort from Matt Jarvis took a big deflection off Nikola Petkovic to leave Vedran Janjetovic helpless.

However, Sydney restored their lead in the 64th minute in controversial circumstances when the referee failed to spot a handball from Gameiro, who then collected a pass from Ibini-Isei before rounding Adrian to slot home.

West Ham substitute Ricardo Vaz Te had an opportunity to set up a late comeback from Sam Allardyce's side, but the forward could only strike the side-netting with his effort at the back post.