It is all very well us reporting on the game as we see it: Between us at Claret and Hugh we’ve probably watched many hundreds of West Ham games over several decades. But when the team puts in a performance as puzzling as that game yesterday it can take the words of a former player – one who ‘gets’ West Ham and has been to the highest level with the club to really cut through the noise.
And when someone of his pedigree speaks, people listen!
West Ham’s former striker and club hero Dean Ashton didn’t mince his words when criticising Graham Potter’s decision making. On talkSport Ashton laid the blame squarely at Graham Potter’s door for the rapid switch from pushing for a second goal to outright backs-to-the-wall defending:
“I think the fact he took Bowen off, brought (Konstantinos) Mavropanos on and went very deep in the game, against Southampton! Those are the sort of things that won’t sit well at all with the West Ham supporters….It’s a shocker for West Ham ..to allow Southampton to have 15 shots at your goal, when you are playing at home against a side that are well and truly relegated.”
And that is without mention of the ‘Fullkrug for Soucek’ substitution which meant West Ham stopped trying to score and invited Southampton to attack them. It must have seemed a good idea at the time. But it shows a greater negative mindset where the West Ham head coach would rather go timid than go for the jugular, at home, against the already relegated bottom team.
And that is deeply worrying for West Ham’s future.
Entirely Potter’s fault . Yet again he made absurdly negative tactical decisions which cost a goal in the dying minutes . Westham do have enough of the right players to get much better results as proven by Potter himself when he briefly plays the correct tactics . In Potter I don’t trust anymore . Potter has a long history of boring , bland risk averse football . Westham have Paqueta , Kudus , Bowen , Fulkrug and Wan Bissaka who could all play in the first team of a big six side and so the only thing holding back Westham is very poor offensive tactics or indeed none most of the time with Potter . Sullivan won’t sack him though ( he hates paying compensation ) and so get ready for a relegation battle next season .
Sorry folks, my maths not what it was. 28.3% equals one win every 3.5 games, about ten to eleven per season.
Still not much to write home about .
We seem to have the worst of both worlds, a new manager who seems completely incapable of making tactical decisions which improve our results. Then after Fullkrug’s interview a team who are split and fail to follow the manager’s instructions and who are simply not good enough to play at top Premiership level. When he said the very next goal kick went long after scoring and half the team trying to attack while the other half defend, that reveals serious failings in communication and the team both individually and as a collective. Lopetegui lost his job because players could not understand him, Potter does not have the same excuse and the Mavraponos for Bowen and Soucek for Fullkrug substitutions were just completely incompetent. To allow a team who had only achieved 10 points in 32 games a total of 15 shots against us was a sad indictment of just how low we have sunk this season. Only Sullivan and Brady could appoint a manager who has a worse record than Lopetegui yet still selects players who are clearly not capable or interested in playing for our club.
Fullkrug was angry with half the players for doing that not with Potter. But as I pointed out in an earlier post what message does taking all of Kudus, Bowen and Fullkrug off give ?
Potter does need to shoulder part of the blame whatever his instructions to the players were because he definitely went less offensive.
So far as I can see Fullkrug is the only one saying things as they are and he’s putting in honest performances too. If only we had eleven players like it.
I was at the game and when those two descisions were made i was walking down the steps and back to the station, i simply do not understand the logic behind those two substitutions……attacking force off!!!!……..defensive mode on.!!!! resulting in another clusterf**k. The atmosphere is just dead and i heard more noise from the Saints fans than our own………….good on Fullkrug for speaking his mind as well!!!
Said it before, why did we take Potter? Answer, he was cheap, in fact free..
His stats in premiership , 28.3% win equal to. 1
Win every 4 1/2 games, meaning 8 wins per season.
Typical WHU management! Couldn’t organise anything in a brewery!,,