Blind Hammer argues that the prime focus next season remains the defence.
Disturbing signals are emerging from West Ham that we may yet again have muddled thinking in our defensive strategies.
A few days ago David Gold responded to a query on Twitter about a potential loan for Reece Oxford. A West Ham fan wanted to know why we were not prepared to give Oxford a chance ourselves.
Gold responded that we already had 4 international centre backs so Oxford’s path to the first team was effectively blocked.
Now this apparently innocent observation by Gold raised all sorts of alarm bells for me.
First of all we need to have some context. Almost exactly a year ago this week I wrote an article entitled “The Case for the Defence” in which I criticised the attempt to sign a “20 goal a season striker” without providing a similar focus on our defence. I have no hesitation now in repeating yet again my belief that defensive fragilities remain more of an issue. When the season is taken as a whole weakness in defence caused more issues than our striking feebleness. During our worst passages this season we were conceding on average 3 goals a game. This is simply not viable for a top flight club to sustain and achieve any sort of success. Transferring even Ronaldo and Messy to West Ham would not have worked if they needed to score on average 4 goals to win a game.
Now thankfully Bilic eventually found a tactical formation which, at the tail end of last season, gave some basis for defensive security. We only really got a thumping in our last home game against Liverpool. Tellingly even in this game our worst phase of play came when we reverted to 4 at the back, after falling behind, with sadly predictable consequences.
The fact is that for nearly all of the season we rarely looked secure by playing 4 at the back. Using only 2 centre backs seems to result in their being exposed.
It is in this context that I find Gold’s remarks so worrying. Gold obviously believes that the squad only has need for 4 top quality centre backs. This statement only make sense if he believe that we will be playing only 2 centre backs on a regular basis. . Yet we have recent evidence that we can only effectively defend with not 2 but 3 centre backs. If we will be playing 3 centre backs regularly as at the end of last season we need at least 5 and arguably 6 options in central defence. Last season 2 of our most effective central defenders, Reid and Obonna, spent large periods of the season injured. We should not be gambling that this problem will not re-occur.
I thought that Bilic and the club had learnt from this and would plan a squad which could at least deliver a 3 at the back formation securely without having to squeeze square pegs into round holes. I will be disappointed in the extreme if we are again forced into wasting the talents of Cheikhou Kouyaté in central defence. I suspect that the player himself will feel similar disappointment. Planning to use Håvard Nordtveit in this role would, I believe, be irresponsible given the defensive weaknesses we have shown in the last 18 months.
Now Gold is obviously not Bilic and it is Bilic who is responsible for team tactics and formation, however the problems with our defensive performance over 18 months should be at the forefront of attention and understood by the club hierarchy from top to bottom.
The case for Oxford going to Germany could be supported if we believe both Rice and Burke are ahead of him in the pecking order for first team places. However this was not the message. The message was that apparently Fonte, Obonna, Collins and Reid are enough squad cover for the season. If this is really the thinking at West Ham I think it is muddled and learns nothing from last season.
It is from defensive security that we must build confidence in our team; the crowd at the London Stadium must not endure pessimism that we are inevitably going to concede goals as a matter of course particularly in the final minutes.
Whilst on yet another summer glamour hunt for a striker the club must learn the lessons of last season and also prioritise the need to have the clearest strategy for locking our defence.
COYI
David Griffith