David Moyes and his dour demeanour at West Ham? It is a diseased club where players use the stadium as an excuse for tame displays while selling Dimitri Payet has proven catastrophic

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Mark Noble looked for a pass, in vain. He looked for a run, and none came. He searched for a team-mate willing to take responsibility, and drew a final blank. With two Liverpool players on his tail, he ran out of pitch and took the ball into touch.

He turned in frustration to the other claret shirts. 'Hey,' Noble shouted. 'Someone want the f****** ball!'

This is the malaise that David Moyes has to address, if the West Ham job is his. This is the mood of despair he must lift, the attitude he must banish. Moyes, with his dour, hangdog demeanour; his perceived air of caution. He must get them up, before they drag him down. It is hardly a match made in heaven.

Mark Noble's struggles for West Ham against Liverpool epitomised the London side's issues

Slaven Bilic's time as manager of West Ham seems to be up after the 4-1 Liverpool defeat 

David Moyes - who took Sunderland down last season - is in line to replace Bilic

And that is before Moyes takes the temperature of the locals, whose reaction to his impending arrival is lukewarm at best. Fan forums are notoriously volatile beasts but when 'Moyes Out' is running as a thread before the man is even appointed — with 400 plus votes before 10am on Sunday — it hardly bodes well for the honeymoon period.

Perhaps this is why there has been talk of cold feet, of West Ham's board seeing the backlash on social media and, shocked, considering alternates. What a club this is, too in thrall to Twitter and vox pops. Whether Moyes is the right fit or not, shouldn't his prospective employers at least have the courage of their convictions, if he is their man?

After all, the case against Moyes is frequently voiced and straightforward. His qualities are largely historic. He did well at Everton — without winning trophies, unless fourth place is counted — and his teams were efficiently organised.

Yet he disappointed given his big break at Manchester United, and he took Sunderland into the Championship with a team that was little more than a shower. They looked, at times, very much like West Ham on Saturday. Frightened individuals, without the heart for the battle — and Moyes was singularly unable to inspire them, with his negative pronouncements masquerading as realism.

'I'd be kidding if I said the players we are going to bring in will make a big difference,' Moyes said during the last January transfer window. 'We probably couldn't get that level of player.' Unsurprisingly, results did not improve.

West Ham's players have greater quality than Moyes's Sunderland team, but without effort it is meaningless. The defeat that looks to have brought Slaven Bilic's time to an end was marked by its carelessness. Not just in the many mistakes but in a general absence of character. Players did not work hard enough, were not alarmed by their predicament, or that of their doomed manager.

The ex-professionals commenting from the television studio — Steven Gerrard, Frank Lampard, Steve McManaman — were appalled, but those who have followed West Ham through much of the previous 16 months will barely have raised an eyebrow.

Steve McManaman, Frank Lampard and Steven Gerrard were appalled by West Ham's display

Those who have followed West Ham closely for over a year have seen that level too often

For the last 12 months, West Ham's travails have been blamed on the London Stadium

If anything, they were worse against Liverpool in the same fixture at the end of last season.

This team have been lucky in many ways. For a year, they have hidden behind the move to the new stadium as an excuse for tame performances. Yet it isn't the stadium that covers less ground than any team in the Premier League, it isn't the stadium that makes fewest sprints.

The penny has dropped with the supporters now. Some may still blame the move away from Upton Park, but the majority understand this runs far deeper. The London Stadium merely gives an excuse to players whose greatest exertion is spent looking for one. They are hiding behind its concrete shell to cover an abdication of responsibility. West Ham have won one league game away since February 4.

This isn't just about home form. Mark Schwarzer — 10 years a Premier League goalkeeper — said he was recently in conversation with Joe Hart. At Manchester City, Hart said, when he got the ball he had 10 outfield options for a pass. Everyone wanted it.

At West Ham, that was reduced to three or four brave souls. He may have needed to round down even that slender figure on Saturday. Hart would collect the ball, search fruitlessly for available feet — and then clutch it ever more tightly to his chest.

Noble was an honourable exception, even if the fans no longer seem to appreciate it. Manuel Lanzini has quality in his game, although he is no Dimitri Payet. As for the rest, for the most part they were hiding. If they got the ball, they dumped it in haste, without a thought beyond self-preservation. Bilic's successor will be coming to another diseased football club. In Moyes's case, he has only just left one in Sunderland.

The decision to sell Payet has been, as predicted, catastrophic. Now that the going rate for a good full back is more than £50million, accepting half for the most productive midfield player in English football sits among the worst pieces of business in history.

Even double that would not replace what Payet brought to West Ham. In 2016, he created 144 Premier League chances. The next best was Christian Eriksen with 116. 

Five players aside — Eriksen, Mesut Ozil, Kevin De Bruyne, Alexis Sanchez and David Silva — Payet made double or more the chances of anyone in the competition, and more than any player at Manchester United, Chelsea and Liverpool in that time. 

With three days of the transfer window to go, to sell him on the cheap was a dismal and costly call; and West Ham have not recovered from it.

Joe Hart regularly finds himself with few options for a pass when he gets the ball at West Ham

Selling Dimitri Payet - one of the league's most creative players - has been catastrophic

Still, if Bilic is sacked, whoever is next will never have known the fillip of Payet in midfield, so may not be dragged down by his absence the way the current regime has been. Maybe they all came to rely on him too much and became blinded to the weaknesses of the rest of the group. Maybe Payet's match-winning brilliance made team-mates lazy, too.

Bilic looks set to be the fall guy, but this is not all his fault. He has been undermined almost from the start of the season once owner David Sullivan outed him as the man who did not want Renato Sanches, and others, on loan — just at the time the board were being criticised for failing to secure William Carvalho from Sporting Lisbon.

In the last season of his contract, Bilic has looked increasingly adrift, and his players no longer respond to him. Will the same group respond to Moyes if he is handed only a short-term contract?

What is the difference? What would such a move say, other than the new manager is a stopgap, until a better option comes along? Why would anyone take the job on that basis, and why would that manager command respect?

Bilic has looked increasingly adrift at West Ham and his players no longer respond to him

West Ham fans have often streamed out early from the London Stadium due to bad displays

West Ham's buys are a mish-mash, the investment — given player sales — below what was promised after the move to the new stadium. Many will view the proposed appointment of Moyes the same way. 

An inexpensive short-term fix, a firefighter there to organise and stave off relegation, rather than make the great leap forward that was meant to come on departing Upton Park.

If he does that, it will buy him some time, and maybe a permanent position. If he doesn't, there will no longer be enough fans inside the London Stadium at the beginning, to stream out as usual long before the end.