West Ham United boss Sam Allardyce was disappointed with their friendly defeat to Wellington Phoenix.
Mauro Zarate was on the scoresheet in the 2-1 loss.
"We're 20 days into our pre-season and I think that we are disappointed with the first half performance, when we were caught cold by the Phoenix," admitted Allardyce to whufc.com. "They showed a great attitude and played at a tempo that we had a little struggle keeping tabs with and that's where we lost the two goals.
"We are finding our feet and finding our fitness with each game but we certainly didn't find our standard, whereas the Phoenix hit their standard and they competed as we expected them to.
"They shut us down high up the pitch and I thought they did that exceptionally well. They knocked us out of our stride but, saying that, we should have scored the first goal when Carlton Cole took a cutback from Matt Jarvis.
"We then should have scored just before half-time when it fell to Cheikh and that was the difference between the two teams - they took their two chances and we didn't. They scored through a header at the near post and the strike in the bottom corner for the second was the way I was expecting us to be finishing.
"We tried to come back in the second half and got a little bit better. I had to change the team because of the fatigue that kicked into the players because we've been working extremely hard.
"After our journey we've been training every day, morning and afternoon, because we've got to get our fitness levels up and fatigue the players.
"It is a disappointing result, but we're 20 days into pre-season and what matters is getting them ready for 16 August. I've won every pre-season game in the past and lost the first three or four games in the league, and not won a pre-season game and then not lost the first eight or ten games of the season."
