Crystal Palace 5-2 West Ham: Woeful Hammers THUMPED by Oliver Glasner's Eagles after falling 4-0 down inside half an hour as pressure increases on David Moyes

As David Moyes and his West Ham players trudged down the tunnel at Selhurst Park, the Crystal Palace anthem Glad All Over by the Dave Clark Five rang in their ears.

For them and the Hammers fans that remained, they were just glad it was over. And over it surely is now. Not just for their season and any lingering hopes of European football but for Moyes too.

Their thumping 5-2 defeat here by Palace, thanks to goals from Michael Olise, Eberechi Eze and two from Jean-Phillpe Mateta, left them battered, bruised and humiliated with an overriding sense of how much more either the players or the manager have left to give.

West Ham were four goals down after half an hour. Another chance, as against Fulham last weekend, to go sixth spurned and just days after a spirited performance against Bayer Leverkusen saw their Europa League journey come to an end. Moyes’s contract is up in the summer. Can he carry on next season if the season peters out like this?

Before the Leverkusen game, Moyes was bullish about his tenure. This was a club, he said, that bobbed up and down. No manager ever had it easy. It was a team that’s been relegated but now, under him, has been in Europe three times in a row and was in the process of trying to make it four.

That’s so much of the frustration about West Ham, though. Like Forrest Gump and his selection boxes, so Hammers fans arrive at every game unsure of what’s going to get served up when Moyes thrusts his hand into collection tin.

Will it be the hard crunchy one with a bit of bite, the one capable of beating Arsenal at the Emirates with 25 per cent possession. Or will it be the smooth, silky one that can go so close to ending Bayer Leverkusen’s unbeaten streak as it did on Thursday night. Or will it be that one with the soft centre that requires hardly any pressure upon it for the shell to collapse.

It was clear within half an hour at Selhurst Park that it was, quite clearly, the latter. Palace, led by the majestic Eberechi Eze, were majestic and ruthless. West Ham were pathetic and gutless.

Michael Olise made it 1-0 after seven minutes, somehow being first to a header six yards out after a simple cross saw Lukasz Fabianski come flapping and West Ham’s defenders standing still.

Eze doubled the lead after a quarter of an hour, scissor-kicking a rebound into the roof of the net and dancing off into the corner. Twenty minutes and it was three with a fittingly comic own goal when Will Hughes floated a ball into the box, Fabianski and Emerson looked at each other. Eventually, both went for it, Emerson got there first and poked it into his own net.

By the time the fourth went in just after the half-hour, the Olés had already begun from the jubilant Palace fans. That, too, was straight-forward. Olise crossed it in and Mateta tapped it in under little pressure. It was all just so easy.

Michail Antonio pulled one back just before half-time but no one celebrated. The only ironic cheers came from the hardy Hammers fans tucked into the corner of Selhurst Park.

Yes, West Ham were missing players. Yes, playing Thursdays and Sundays is tough and takes it toll on a squad with the shallow depth of West Ham. Yes, top scorer Jarrod Bowen wasn’t fit after only making the Leverkusen game thanks to pain-killing injections and was a huge loss.

None of that, really, excuses the performance West Ham produced at Selhurst Park.

It was no surprise when Mateta made it five with his second of the game just after the hour. Eze, as he did all game, meandered his way between white shirts that may as well have been training cones and picked his pass for Mateta to finish.

Palace could well have had more. Mitchell blazed one over in the first half, Eze dragged another couple wide.

The only shock about the comedy own goal that wrapped up the contest was that it came from Palace when Dean Henderson missed Mitchell’s back pass completely and it bobbled into the net but there was such little reaction around the ground that anyone not watching could easily have missed it.

Moyes has long insisted there’s a contract on the table for him to extend his stay at West Ham beyond this summer if he so desires. Does it have an expiry date? On this showing, you wonder how long it will be until Karen Brady accidentally catches it with her elbow and knocks it into the fire.

Even if Moyes’s future has not gone up in smoke just yet, their flickering hopes of European football appear to have done just that.