One week down the line and I still don’t really know what’s going on at West Ham. Another heavy defeat, once again an opposing team have been allowed to go through our back four like a well heated blade through half-fat margarine. Plenty of our players who looked like world beaters last season are mere shadows of their former selfs.
We are now in 18th place and officially in a relegation scrap with a very lonely win standing against five defeats, not to mention an embarrassing negative goal difference.
I know, the whole stadium move shenanigansare not exactly helping our cause, but I refuse to accept that as the main culprit. Our new home ground has the potential to be a cauldron of noise and atmosphere, but the spark still needs to come from the players on the pitch and their performances. Don’t get me wrong, even in that latest dreadful loss against Southampton I saw some decent attacking moves from our lads and also some fine passing, but unfortunately not enough of it.
Plus, if you concede 3 or 4 goals in every game you make it nigh on impossible to even get a point out of a game when in fact we desperately need three point games now, not draws. The lack of confidence appears to spread throughout the entire team, over the sidelines and dugout into the stands, permeating the entire club.
Any consolidation needs to begin with the back four. I admit that it’d help maters if we were in a position to field the same back four over a number of games. Once Cresswell is back it should be a big bonus to begin with. But Cresswell alone will not be the answer. We need some brave decisions from Bilic here. Reid has been off his game for a while now. I would advocate a move of throwing in Oxford at CB for a few games and see how he does. Surely our defending can’t get much worse at this point anyway.
The same should apply in midfield. Both Kouyate and Noble haven’t pulled up any trees recently, so maybe it’s worth a thought to give other lads a chance now, Fernandes maybe or Domingos Quina, or play Obiang and/or Nordtveit as holding midfielder where both looked pretty decent so far. Upfront Zaza has shown me nothing so far to suggest he is the answer, so why not start with Fletcher for instance ? Or even put young Martinez on the bench as an option ? Whatever we have tried so far, it hasn’t clicked.
This now is where Bilic needs to earn his corn. And fast.
Make no mistake, if performances don’t pick up soon for us, then people will vote with their feet and stay away from home games, season ticket or not. We’ve already seen people leave games early when being two goals down. If a percentage of supporters are unhappy about the new stadium anyway it won’t take a lot to keep them away from attending games regularly.
I’m not judging if that’d be the right way to act as a supporter but I maintain the notion that the team needs to give the crowd a spark in the first place so the fans can get excited and noisy, in return the atmosphere will then carry the players.
My local team, by the way, have finally suffered their first defeat of the season in the most bizarre fashion, I would almost say it was very Hammeresque: Having a man advantage after 20 minutes already (after a professional foul), Concordia Hamburg simply never made the man advantage count. The opposition were allowed to still pass the ball around at ease and score on the counter twice, remember, all while being a man down.
Final result was a 0:2 scoreline, with the opposing team down to 8 (!!!) men just before the final whistle. My lads created numerous goalscoring opportunities, but wasted every single one in embarrassing fashion, blasting the ball over the crossbar or past the wrong side of the post (Sounds familiar, doesn’t it ?). There was also a shocking number of misplaced passes in midfield plus some clever time wasting efforts and some very impressive play acting from the opposition.
So, in footballing terms it has been a pretty crap weekend for me. If my local Ice Hockey team hadn’t won it could have been even worse than it already was. One final thought on West Ham. I’ve heard someone mentioning the idea that our team wasn’t used to the bigger pitch at the London Stadium and it wouldn’t help that West Ham cannot use the OS for training sessions. If that theory has a ring of truth about it, maybe the club should get at least one of the pitches at Rush Green re-sized accordingly to mirror the measurements of the playing surface at London Stadium.
Whatever helps our lads to string a few passes and wins together. We could really do with a bit of positive news now. I refuse to panic just yet. I accept that this is going to be one hell of a tough season. I just want to see our lads play according to their potential. If we get anywhere near that level we should be fine eventually. COYI!