CandH’s resident ratings man Niall McDonald is back from his holidays and gives you his thoughts and markings on today’s Irons performances
Adrian: One brilliant save early in the second half before a dreadful rush of blood to the head. Flapped at everything after the equaliser 3
Ogbonna: Another solid afternoon. Nearly scored in the first half. Seems more comfortable in with an extra centre half alongside him 6
Collins: Replaced Reid in the middle of the back three and did the basics confidently 6
Kouyate: Certainly has an easier time of it at the back. Wouldn’t mind seeing some more forward passes 5
Cresswell: Always available but rarely found by his teammates. Felt for him today, seems stuck between two positions 5
Noble: Not great. Not awful. 5
Obiang: Another professional performance in the middle. I assume his late substitution was partly intended to grant him a ripple of applause from the crowd 6
Antonio: Sign of the times but, again, the goalscorer should probably get top marks 7
Lanzini: Subbed after struggling to get going 4
Payet: Has to be recognised for another vital assist. I’d like to see us give him the ball more often and force him to get involved 6
Ayew: I’ve stopped marking strikers down on their likelihood of scoring but Ayew showed willing and effort. He was reprimanded by Bilic for dropping into his own half to collect the ball and try to create something/anything after half an hour 6
Subs:
Fernandes: Youngster found it tough against the physical Stoke approach when he came on 4
Fletcher: Looked the best footballer on the field during his cameo appearance – must be worth a run in the team – good enough/old enough and all that 6.5
Feghouli: Late substitute, too late to be scored
We had a bit of a joke about Antonio – I thought he had his boots tied together and my brother thought he had them on the wrong feet – whatever, he spent most of the first half falling over and losing the ball to the Stoke left-back Pieters, who he got no change from!
I thought he had a poor game along with Payet, Lanzini was virtually invisible – my Man of the Match would have been Obiang who had another solid performance.
A poor game though, Stoke had virtually no ambition and West Ham had no attack!
Another shocking performance. When is everyone going to realise that Bilic isn’t up to it. In the Premier League you get very little time to get it right. Four games without defeat is a very distorted way of looking at it, when you actually look at the games and our performances.
Bilic’s team selections have been woeful, sticking with Tore for too long and picking others on reputation, not form. Chris Sutton is right. I’ve also been saying Adrian should have been dropped weeks ago. He needs to understand there are consequences for simply playing badly. Randolph is a very decent international keeper and has to play now. Payet was awful. Too many hospital passes to team mates and gave the ball away so many times I lost count.
Bilic can complain about the slow, flat performance, but what do they do in training all week? He has to go. Now!
Don’t agree that Bilic isn’t upto it but I do think he should look at getting someone in to assist that will put a rocket up the players, everything looks a little too comfortable, I don’t think it is any surprise after working the players hard we had good performances but now they have dropped off again, every week the players should be working harder in training, that is what the successful clubs are doing. Our players are very good quality but they are not playing at a high level consistently, there was minimal pressing by us yesterday, they can’t blame the crowd for that we gave them plenty of noise and atmosphere but they didn’t respond.