West Ham 0 – Tottenham Hotspur 3
The warnings were there, throughout the first half. Corner after corner came over, West Ham struggling to deal with repeated in-swinging crosses throughout the first 45 minutes. Shaky, badly organised. A goal disallowed – wrongly. What more proof were needed that West Ham’s defensive shortcomings were being exposed as the Hammers were on the ropes for the last twenty minutes of that first half.
What happened in the 15 minutes at half time?
Did Potter make changes to cope with Spurs aeriel threat? No.
Did he make personnel switches to help his defence? No.
Any reorganisation? Tactical switches? Not a thing.
What did they all do for that fifteen minutes, I wonder, sit and have a positive visualisation?
No changes at half time then and two minutes later, Tottenham score from – a corner.
FOUR West Ham defenders are congregated at the near post, but the ball comes to the far and Sarr heads in unmarked.
Coaching Fail.
Player Fail.
Defensive leadership fail. (More on that later).
The sad part about that game is that West Ham showed real glimpses of promise in the first half, some nice football. Diouf had the beating of Kudus and if we’d had a striker on the pitch, well, who knows.
But simply giving an opponent corner after corner because you have no ‘Antonio’ like hold-up player to stop the hoofed- away ball coming back again and again merely allows that opponent to practise their delivery again and again.
Without changes from West Ham’s manager at half time, predictably the cave-in followed.
And when the changes were made – as usual, too little, too late. This is Potter’s team, remember. No young Callum Marshall on the bench to bring a bit of pace. No decent striker recruited in the summer. If I still had a season ticket, I’d be tempted to send it back. Fortunately my son and I saw the writing on the wall last year after the same fixture and declined the club’s offer of a couple of thousand quid to watch “that”. After more than twenty years regular ‘pilgrimage’. Now it feels like ritual wearing of a hair shirt even just watching on the TV.
It just makes me sad. Every bit as bad as Lopetegui. Make it stop, please. I’d even settle for Mourinho, at least he can drill a defence.
i wonder was potter ever learn to every opponent he face? (formation, available players, tactics & strategy they often use, etc). or he just using same formula over and over again as general pattern and hoping it works?
Could not agree more, Martin. Direction and common sense missing on the field. Potter should have sorted this long ago.
Agree with every word Martin except the “15 minutes” of coaching failure. It’s been the last 9 months! 2 home wins this year, absolutely pathetic. To see 80% of home fans leave the stadium long before the end in a home Derby against Spurs, and Potter absolutely clueless in the dressing room and on the touchline says it all. He has to be sacked today.
Yes every word.
How can he keep starting JWP and Soucek?
How can he keep not playing a centre forward?
How can the defence not mark individually or zonally at corners?
How can he make the wrong substitutions too late so often. Took off Fernandes and Summerville!
Why is no academy player getting a minute on the pitch?
I’m at a loss to understand what he’s trying to achieve. Lopetegui the same. It’s just depressing to watch.
All comes back to Sullivan – most fans never wanted Potter, but if he’s sacked who comes in, Dyche, Steve Cooper ?, surely another loser from the Sullivan pot of crap managers, a “yes” man.
Sullivan needs to be forced to step away from any footballing decisions because it’s him who will relegate this club. We won’t get a decent manager because decent managers know what they’re doing and want control of footballing affairs. Sullivan doesn’t like that as his ego won’t let him. He doesn’t give a t**s about the fans, the man needs to be put out to grass !
Mourinho?!? Hush your mouth.
Mourinho would keep The Hammers in the premier league. No other self-respecting manager would take on that poisoned chalice. He’d take it because he has a London home, and would want to be the first manager to be appointed to three different London clubs. West Ham will be the bookies favourites to win the Championship next season.
Where next for Potter? Hogwarts FC?
We badly needed either Wilson or Fullkrug but both were on the bench. It’s debatable who’s slower out of Soucek and JWP and while you may get away with playing one of them both is too much too slow – Why on Earth did we make such a song and dance of signing livelier midfielders, it was a recognised problem that is now being ignored. I cannot understand at all what JWP is doing to get into the team. Subs came questionably late and wrong players were withdrawn.
To my mind these are Potter failings as better options were available but not taken.
I do not want, nor wish, to see Potter fail, I’d much rather he succeeds but he is going to have to get cracking.
Journalist refer to him as studious (not necessarily referring to C&H). What the hell. Is it because he holds his chin a lot, or what? If he is, he has had since mid -season 23-24 to study his team and by now a studious person knows what he is doing. A hesitant person does n’t though.
He has made changes also brought in some really good youngsters – great! but not sure he is going to have time to fix all the problems, then correct mistakes he introduces. For example, Paqueta as a no 9 up against Romero and Van de Ven coached by Thomas Frank?! It makes for an ineffective attack and weakens the midfield in one fell swoop, also Paqueta is pretty much marked/isolated out of the game for the majority of the 90 mins. Our manager is supposed to be one who switches formations and tactics in a game, yet he sticks with THIS ONE for the majority of the match – go figure. Studious? yeah right.
As for his assessment of the 1st half as having ‘glimpses of positivity’ that is tantamount to saying the majority of the 1st half was not good. Be nice to hear our coach talk about tactics and strategies one day, instead of emotional impressions of a match. If you want to talk emotions, where is the spirit and backbone? Not meant as a criticism of the players, it means there is something fundamentally wrong. Lack of leadership in midfield/defense? lack of faith in the team setup? something else?
oh well, i’m gonna stop writing and wish the team luck and I hope we do have some good matches this season.
We need our real supporters to stand up and be counted and attend the march v crystal palace in huge numbers! We also need to boycott the brentford match to show unity.If we dont we will be RELEGATED for sure !!!
Well I got suckered in with the 3-0 win over Notts Forest last week and decided to splash out and get a subscription to the EPL again…
Bother.
Still, unlike the rip off costs of the UK, it’s very reasonable here in Aus. $25.00 a month for all EPL games, plus FA Cup, loads of other games, and possibly even Champions League (I saw it on STAN but it might be an extra cost).
The post mortem of this game in the papers and online has been brutal.
A few things stand out for me, in 2 categories:
1) West Ham
2) the EPL in general
West Ham:
• The management isn’t good enough. Since Moyse the fans have highlighted the same weaknesses that need addressing. How bad is the management of this team that it still isn’t being addressed?
Too slow in the midfield, defenders that can’t defend crosses, set plays and corners, lack of a striker, and no faith in promoting youth (when other teams are blooding 15 and 16 years olds).
• The board has no ambition. They moved us to a soulless stadium with the promise of Champions League football. We’re closer than ever to Championship football.
They may have saved the club from financial ruin when they came in (and I’ve praised them enough for this alone), but now it seems that the club and fans, are just a Sullivan cash cow.
• Sullivan needs to understand he is not a manager, a football insider, a football genius, a DOF. He is just a businessman. And the upcoming protests, I hope, will serve as a reminder of this.
The EPL:
• The number of comments online saying West Ham should be grateful to just remain in the EPL.
Not hope for much more than a mid-table finish, and the occasional cup run.
It smacks of the “Big 6” essentially closing out this league as a competition.
Not a competition between 20 teams for the title, but 6.
So not a competition at all then?
I have long said that a universal wage and transfer cap need to be introduced.
Probably across the top leagues of Europe.
Reward clubs who invest in their academies, not those that have owners with deep pockets (or the wealth of a Gulf Oil state).
FIFA, UEFA, EPL, must love the revenue the current set up generates for them, but in my humble opinion, the current set up is killing the game for the real fans.
A few teams that hoard the best players in the world, against the rest…
Reminds me of playing in the park as a kid, when it was big kids vs little kids.
The only leveller we had back then was the lack of VAR and a brutal sliding tackle, from behind, at knee height.
You tell it like it is, Neil. It is sad. At least we can just watch it all on Stan here in Oz, for a reasonabale price. I feel for the fans who still shell out their hard earned to actually go to the stadium to watch what has become an excuse for a football team under the present ownership and management. Yes, we can just switch off the TV after yet another capitulation and try to forget it. Except we can’t. It really hurts to see how bad our club has become. We make light of the fact we are West Ham fans to friends and people we know but we are embarrassed. But West Ham fans have not suddenly decided to support the club because they are a big six club and used to winning. Many of us grew up going to watch them at Upton Park and our support stuck through the good times and the bad. I just hope there is light at the end of this very dark tunnel.
Absolutely agree with all those comments about the EPL and as a consequence this pushes clubs towards mega-investors in the hope of competing. They then just rip everything up and look for high profit while destroying what the club is to fans, while selling it as chasing success.
Is Callum Marshall unavailable? It’s a disgrace that Potter put 2 keepers on the bench and left him out! Yes that means we’d have had 3 forwards on the bench but when you’re starting with Zero up front, 3 on the bench isn’t the end of the world.
All correct, Martin. Mind you, they were very good corner kicks , expertly taken – from the footballing point of view !
I was watching the game in a bar in Spain with loads of Spuds fans, said before the game we have a defence that can’t defend set pieces and a keeper that’s shaky on crosses, why haven’t they hired in a set piece specialist, we have supposedly the best set piece ball striker in the World … yet that hasn’t resulted in us scoring goals or free kicks.
If every fan and commentator can see that JWP is too slow and doesn’t win any balls in midfield why can’t our coaching team ?
It was so easy for Spurs yesterday they didn’t even have to try and that sent alarm bells because I didn’t think they were particularly good they just didn’t meet any resistance and were able to pen us in because nobody in defence or central midfield was making the team push out.
JWP is a great person to have around the team but he isn’t good enough on the field anymore. He will make a great sub or Championship player but we will go down if he is our CDM.
I was hopeful that Potter could build us into a team that could control possession and create more chances than the opposition but with this set of players he is going backwards fast. Am not seeing anything that looks like improvement and don’t think Nuno or Mourinho are the answer either
Glasner understands the modern game though whether or not he fancies the job is another question.
No to Mourinho, as much as Potter is maybe putting the last nails to the coffin, Mourinho would simply be a pall-bearer.
concern with Potter is if he fixes one problem, he does not complete the job (finally stopped using a back 5, the back 4 is better but ill trained). Kilman should not be playing, he’s having a poor spell.
Got some excellent midfielders in but refuses to play Potts and plays other ill-suited players game in, game out. Will we ever see Potts + Magassa? who knows.
Understand what people have said about not seeing Marshall as a solution, but he is in the squad and as part of his continued development bringing him on against Romero with 35 mins to play, would have been a useful tactical switch. Clear instructions to Marshall would be to close down, harry and run into space to play 1-2s, switch out, switch in with Bowen to keep defense guessing. At corners he is outside the box, NOT challenging Romero and playing into their hands. To be honest I do not trust our coaching staff to know how to employ him while protecting him.
This article is spot on. Thank you.
How many times must we say that Potter is way off depth for what West Ham drastically needs.
Firstly, he stubbornly continues with a keeper, glued to his goal line for every corner, continues with centre backs who refuse to defensively head balls away, and refuse to man at corners against. And the eventual corner goal, as you and the match day commentators rightfully say … came with 4x WH players crowding the near post, when the ball was floated to the back post for the Spurs goal. How ridiculous, man. And who were the man markers in the videos … the 2 smallest WH players in the team. And where are the tall centre backs?
Clearly the result of extremely bad coaching and team selection. I have never ever seen WH in such a predicament, even when we had weaker players.
Please bring back Fabianski, Dawson, Oggie or Ginge. What WH has in Mads, Kilman, Mavro + Todibo are the most impassionate and vulnerable defenders of all time. And the goals against are heading for another record, with delegations arms wide open to take us down.
Come on West Ham, do the right thing please !!!
Get Nuno Martin. Before someone else does.
So if a man paid Millions to coach and pick the side cannot see how to set up a side from the start yet us mere fans who don’t no what we are talking about can see the bleeding obvious from the get go you just have to wonder….JWP/Soucek Pivot in midfield really just how and why do those players keep getting picked? i would love to hear the explanation and the proof that those to work because there is plenty to the contrary…Start a game against our fiercest rival without a striker again why? if we had the Paqueta chance would of been buried by Wilson or any other half decent striker..the crosses Diouf put in well a striker would of anticipated and got his head on but nope that is not the plan but just what the hell the plan is apart from emptying the ground early doors n a regular basis is beyond me.
Potter is so poor who recruited him , the board. No young striker & no real investment in the team , why the board . The whole club needs investment but we have Sullivan . Poor display time for Potter to go
The coaching is failing in every department from selection, to recruitment, tactics and training.
It falls squarely on Potter and the coaching team and the hopeless support at executive level.
On the pitch Kilman, the keeper, Prowse and Soucek are not anywhere near the level needed to build confidence and bring results, yet they are almost always the first names on the team sheet, that has to sit with Potter. I could go on, but the basic failings of picking a team to compete are so obvious to us all it beggars belief how the coaching team continue to keep doing the same things and lose. Surely if they were right and we were all wrong then they’d be winning?
Agree with everything except the last sentence.