Well, there were precious few tricks from West Ham at Watford on Saturday. It certainly wasn’t a treat. It was as bad a day at the office as you might imagine. Our team looked like each player had their own ghost traying to perform on the pitch tonight. It’s hard to find a single player who performed anywhere near his usual standard or at least a standard you would expect them to reach even in bad games.
We’ve had the lot: Carroll trying to be clever with the ball when defending in our own box instead of hoofing the ball into touch, away from danger.
The individual mistakes we spoke about needing eradicating if we wanted to improve as a team.
We’ve seen terrible setpieces, passes overhit or underhit throughout the game, a defense not knowing how to deal with the Watford attacks. Make no mistake: Watford looked like a strong and organised side. They very much deserved their win, as much as it hurt me to see Mark Lawrenson getting this “prediction” of this game right, he must have chuckled to himself there. We’ve also seen Collins being sent off making a frustration-fuelled challenge that rightly cut his afternoon on the pitch short.
There wasn’t much going right for us on the day. How can you possibly get anything positive from this game ? Believe it or not – I can.
First, we got that bloody loss out of the way finally, it had to happen sooner or later, it had to happen against some team and I don’t overly mind it happening against Watford.
This defeat should bring back a bit of realism to our club, we were flying so high that our players probably didn’t even contemplate having to put in a shift to get the win at lowly Watford.
This has been a pattern throughout the early stages of the season: Do well against the big sides, struggle against the so called lesser sides. It’s one of the most broken record in football these days, but it’s true: There no longer are lesser sides in this league! Especially if you take any game too casually, even if it probably only happens subconsciously. That’s something that Bilic will need to work on with his staff getting the message through to the players.
It’s all fine and dandy if you win against the Liverpools and Chelseas of this world, those victories tend to lose a bit of their shine if you follow them up with a stinker of a performance against Watford.
I am moaning here of course while West Ham are still doing the crossed hammers sign from quite a lofty position in the league table.
This defeat is not the end of the world if we get to learn from this for the rest of the season.
The biggest positive from this game though is that it gives Bilic the perfect opportunity to switch things around. Most of us have already mentioned Bilic’s tendency to stick with a winning team and rewarding good performances with keeping players in the starting XI.
After the Watford game he has pretty much free reign to shake things up a bit, maybe even go with two strikers for the next game. Carroll on his own upfront doesn’t work, I’m not even sure Carroll works as a starter, full stop. Or as a player staying on the pitch for 90 minutes.
Moses looked out of his depth. The entire back four was all over the place. And we wasted setpiece opportunities time and time again.
So what would I do for the Everton game ? Good question. We have enough time to see players getting match fit and Collins will be suspended anyway.
I’m also aware that we can’t rely on winning our games by counter attacking all the time, at some stage we need to learn to keep the ball, take our game to the opposition and still find a way to score.
So this is what I would come up with (not that Bilic would need any help from me of course):
Adrian
Tomkins-Ogbonna-Reid-Cresswell
Obiang
Lanzini-Payet-Noble
Sakho-Valencia
Bench: Randolph, Jenkinson, O’Brien, Kouyate, Zarate, Carroll, Jelavic
Weekends always are spoilt somewhat for us fans if West Ham lose. But I choose to put that defeat into room 101 quickly and look forward to the next game. We knew that bumps in the road were likely along the way. I expect Bilic to learn from this. Hopefully he has used this Halloween defeat as a reason to give his team one hell of a rollicking. Because it will be another nightmare before Christmas against Everton if we play them as if they were a lesser side.
NOTE FROM IAIN: David Hautzig will be posting later than usual today.