Defensive Moyes reinforced his backline rather than use attackers
West Ham 0-2 Fulham
I guess I shouldn’t be surprised by West Ham’s lack of ambition against Fulham, but I’m certainly frustrated.
At 1-0 down but with the chance to leapfrog Newcastle into 6th position in the Premier League, David Moyes made the decision to bolster his defence. At a time during the game when his team desperately needed a goal, the manager chose to ignore Maxwel Cornet, George Earthy, and Divin Mubama who were warmed up and ready to go.
Instead, on the 68th minute, he made like-for-like substitutions. Moyes chose to swap Vladimir Coufal and James Ward-Prowse for Ben Johnson and Tomas Soucek. Bizarrely, Coufal was one of the few players having a decent game, but that can be excused, I guess.
I wouldn’t have minded if Moyes had thrown Soucek into the attack and we started launching long balls into Fulham’s box. But he didn’t; he deployed the big midfielder in… erm… midfield.
Man in a muddle: Moyes couldn’t help himself against Fulham
It was a truly baffling decision, and shortly afterwards, Fulham scored their second. Only at that point did Moyes bring on George Earthy, who immediately started making forward passes. Unfortunately for George, he suffered a sickening injury, and his day was cut concerningly short.
However, that shouldn’t mask the poor decision-making by Moyes, who should have introduced Earthy at halftime. The Hammers’ manager is a victim of his own lack of ambition and poor squad management.
If Hughie were here, he’d be on the phone to me now, saying precisely the same thing. This fixture was a crucial one for West Ham’s Europa hopes. Unfortunately, once again, Moyes just couldn’t help himself.
For how long do we have to endure this torture? The bad tactics and awful long term planning of this Manager have been clear for a long time. And the owners don’t have a clue about what needs to be done. They are all dragging the West Ham name through the mud.
Do we want to be a top six club in the Premier or not? If we don’t, let’s continue with this farce. If we do, we need top to bottom changes. Somebody needs to say “enough!”. And only the fans can do that. If the stadium was half empty for most games, the owners would get the message.
But like an abused partner, we keep going back, hoping that things will get better next time. If we want more mediocrity, let’s do nothing and be thankful for the scraps we get now and again.
That was a master class in counter attacking football. Moyes should watch the video and learn a few tricks. Better still, why not poach their manager (and a handful of their Portuguese speaking players)?
Another disaster from moyes blew the chance of moving into 6th place above Man Utd and Newcastle he has no idea how to handle the players his in game decisions are questionable to say the least are the owners blind and hard of hearing they must be to continue to allow this shambles to continue they will wake up one day to find the only fans in the stadium are the away fans he has got to go our season is about to collapse because of his negativity by the end of the week it looks very much like we will be out of the Europa League and have little to no chance of getting into a Europe position and that is solely down to moyes our club players and fans deserve so much better the owners need to act now
Why would we be surprised by Moyes substitutions….he is so scared of risk it’s unbelievable!
Watching this was frustrating, painful and predictable sadly . What is also frightening is what is really needed to undertake a squad overhaul as some of our players are just not at the level to put us where we want our great club to be.
Why are we always reading Moyes decisions cost us. The commentator asked early in the second half if Moyes was thinking of changes. I, like everyone else knew it would be on 68 minutes, like for like. The same as it always is. We have had 3 great seasons in the league and Europe but this blokes ego is holding us back. He has one tactic and bores everyone to death. He got found out 2 years ago and is clueless. Nearly 500 million spent and we have the smallest oldest and slowest squad in the league. The only positive is we’ve got 6 more games with this clueless idiot and we can move on
ha ha ha the great Moyes we was 2nd best all day to a side that have nothing to play for please rid us of the dinosaur 🦕 the ****e today was enough MOYES OUT OUT OUT
After the last couple of seasons watching this dreadful football nothing surprises me any more regarding moyes.
I’ve even read on Hammers news that he has gone to Sullivan moaning bout the small squad .How can the idiot not see this is all on him.
moyes OUT….
First, hope Earthy recovers well, poor lad. I keep hoping DM will seize these games and show he has developed and progressed, or worse comes to worse, he is persuaded by touchline advisors. This game displayed all the usual problems we have season to season: tired players (mentally/physically), frustrated players (Paqueta), lack of cohesion & interplay from our players everywhere, late & poor substitutions, inability to adapt our game (pitch side & touchline) and a lack of skill and incision on the pitch even though we have the players for it. Plus I think that being so structured we do not develop well out of defense into attack, with the player on the ball looking up and not seeing many options (better than before though!). I like certain aspects of DM, including when his counter-attacking play rips possession style teams apart, but he shoots himself in the foot the rest of the season. Will not mention lack of recruitment, lack of Academy players who play a real role in the 1st team instead of just “tasting the atmosphere”,… Oh well. Same time, same game, next year then everyone!?
I do not agree with posts about us wanting to be a top-six club though – I prefer us to keep building at West Ham, get the team humming, playing well together, then as with football, a lot can happen! Great club & academy, really good footballers, but this end of season is going to be tough, but I would rather we took the game to the opposition, including Man City et al, knock them about a bit, get them worried for a change, rather than hope to get a result hanging on by our finger nails. Close up shop at the end, not the beginning of the match.
30 odd goals scored in the premier league this year by teenagers. What a suprise that doesn’t include any westham players. The last youth team/reserve player to make a full league debut was over four years ago I believe so shows how much Moyes thinks of the double winning youth team. He is also fantastic at destroying good forwards like Haller and the Italian and what he has done to Munbana is a disgrace. Moyes has cost Westham millions in his tenure with the amount he lost on these players alone and that’s without taking into account the youngsters that won’t sign contracts because they know the won’t get a chance under Moyes. The Callum Marshall fiasco is another finger pointing to Moyes missing management skills.He should have gone at the end of last season.Potts and Keen would be a better option than Potter( so would Curbishly come to that.Moyes out