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Lanzini consolation but oh how we needed Antonio

Lanzini enjoyed a top game

Lanzini’s goal gave the scoreline a respectable look 

 

Irons 1 Chelsea 2

Well, perhaps the best thing we can say about tonight was that West Ham didn’t collapse before a very talented Chelsea team.

But they did themselves few favours notably when a sloppy Mark Noble pass saw a host of our players the wrong side of the ball as the west Londoners broke away to score through Eden Hazard after 25 minutes.

In fairness the captain had not performed at all badly but you really can’t make those sort of mistakes against such a top counter-attacking team and his efforts afterwards therefore following it pale into insignificance.

It handed Chelsea lead they didn’t deserve at the time after we had controlled the game to a large extent.

And when Costa kneed home a second in the 50th minute there was no way back although a fine injury time strike by Lanzini gave the scoreline a far more respectable look

It could and probably would have been a far different story had the hustle and bustle of Michail Antonio been available because at no time did the Hammers carry the sort of threat that he provides. If ever we needed Antonio it was tonight.

There was far too much sideways and backwards motion and when the ball did go forward to Andy Carroll there was still a significant inability for anyone to latch onto the knock-ons and flick downs he provides.

Randolph was forced to make a couple of world class saves, Snodgrass looked lively all evening but Reid hobbled off with what looks like a significant injury.

In the end there could be no complaints. We are in far better and more resilient shape than we were in the pre-Payet days and Bournemouth on Saturday won’t – HOPEFULLY – pose the worst of problems Chelsea did tonight.

Yes a disappointing evening but we are a team with much more about us these days,

 

 

About Hugh5outhon1895

Hugh Southon is a lifelong Iron and the founding editor of ClaretandHugh. He is a national newspaper journalist of many years experience and was Bobby Moore's 'ghost' writer during the great man's lifetime. He describes ClaretandHugh as "the Hammers daily newspaper!" Follow on Twitter @hughsouthon

5 comments on “Lanzini consolation but oh how we needed Antonio

  1. Ok, we lost to a top team but what was glaringly obvious was the lack of pace in our team! No way could we have caught Chelsea on the break like they did to us for the first goal. Obiang was again different class, lanzini also. But ffs Slav, drop noble, move kouyate into midfield and put Byram RB. And I’m not a noble hater!

    This summer, my god do we need to invest in some pace!

    • Totally agree!
      On the basis of how we started, Antonio was the one guy who could have given us a first-half lead.

  2. We lost to a classy,classy team.Its hard to say about Chelski but true.They will romp away with the league with a team worth hundreds of milliins of pounds.Put this one to bed & move on to the next match.
    Im still recovering from a Dale site match thread so im in a bit of a daze after reading some of those muppets on there.

  3. If Antonio had been present for the first 25 minutes (when we were playing very well), there was a strong possibility that we could have scored a goal or two. When Michail gets flying he is very hard to stop and can be a constant menace to virtually any defense! He has been the shining light of our season, along with Obiang, Lanzini, and Kouyate. If he can improve a bit on his finishing (next season), he could be absolutely dynamite!!

  4. Not sure I agree that we would have beaten them but we would have had a little more threat, everything moved along too slowly it appeared like our players were running in glue, again there was no press, for the first 24 minutes we had a lot of posession but as with almost every match we moved the ball around slowly, that Chelsea team tonight were nothing special, we made them look good by being ponderous, Snodgrass, Lanzini and Obiang look like the only players in our team that are match fit, Cresswell looks slow, the defence all look relatively slow, Feghouli looked heavy legged, Carroll tried hard but is not match fit and Noble is what he is, he actually made two tackles in the match which was more than I thought he would. Hopefully against Bournemouth we can play a different CB with Fonte, if Oxford isn’t playing for Reading get him back and give him a run, we can’t finish in Europe but imho we only need one win to be safe this season, so use the last few games to give all the kids some experience, Bournemouth is the perfect game to start that experiment, they are not that physical and are low on confidence. Noble should be rested time to try a new captain give the armband to Carroll if he is fit or Fonte.

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