Dion Dublin slammed Andriy Yarmolenko for his ‘embarrassing’ dive during West Ham’s 2-1 FA Cup win Kidderminster Harriers on Saturday, as he told BBC Sport.
The 32-year-old, during his side’s nervy extra-time win, decided to dive without any contact on him as the ball was slipped through to him by Pablo Fornals.
Given that David Moyes’s men were playing against a non-league team, it’s even more pathetic that Yarmolenko would resort to such actions.
Life was tough for the Hammers against the Midlands outfit – they needed a stoppage-time goal to take the tie to extra time, before winning the game in stoppage-time of extra time.
As the game was seemingly heading towards penalties, it was understandably getting a little frantic and desperate from the London team.
And rather than taking a shot on when Fornals played a well-weighted pass through to Yarmolenko, former Premier League striker, Dublin, just couldn’t believe what he was seeing.
“That is embarrassing,” said Dublin. “Totally embarrassing from Yarmolenko.
“No contact whatsoever. Just what are you doing?”
It was quite the effort from the non-league outfit, who provided quite the scare to the Premier League team.
This wasn’t a case of Moyes throwing in the youngsters, but playing a near full-strength squad that was probably lucky the game was won in extra-time.
Given what Kidderminster put into the game, they deserved the chance to cause one of the biggest upsets in the competition’s history by the game going to penalties.
But it was all about getting the job done from West Ham and they did just that yesterday.
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