West Ham conceded from a set piece after 15 minutes whilst Mavropanos was off the field following treatment for a whack in the face: No great surprise from West Ham’s form or Millwall’s expected high tempo, highly physical start out of the blocks. Hermansen had pulled off one excellent stop but couldn’t keep out the follow up with Kilman’s embarrassing mistimed jump opening the route to goal.
The first 25 minutes was played almost exclusively in West Ham’s half as Millwall swarmed. There was the feeling that the Hammers had to weather the storm and then start to play their football: One down was not a disaster but two or three would be. Trouble is, too many hoofed balls upfield from West Ham’s back line just kept surrendering possession.
Another big Mavropanos error allowing Arconte through would have gone punished in the top tier, but somehow West Ham survived as their opponents failed to capitalise and half an hour had passed – still ‘just’ 1-0, but not one attack from the Hammers. Too many silly free kicks given away, allowing Millwall to launch the ball forwards on every opportunity. West Ham seemingly second to every ball, bullied all over the pitch.
To be fair, one crashing shot which came back off Hermansen’s crossbar should have made it 2-0 , but just moments later the Lions had their second from a long throw and utter ‘dissaray’ in WestHam’s defence. Pretty pathetic at the back, Hammers. Defending like nine year olds.
Second half changes meant Pablo and Kanté entered, Bowen going close as West Ham rallied with a couple of shots and corners, the game just opening up after an hour. Indeed Pablo almost pulled one back from Bowen’s cross but the Lions ‘keeper saved well. Nuno’s changes were impacting the game as West Ham’s strength from the bench started to improve their play: Austvø for Mukasa was surely Nuno”s last throw on ’68’, as the Hammers looked for a way back.
Mohamadou Kanté’s brilliant shot from outside the box into the bottom corner gave the Irons a lifeline and just 15 minutes left to get something out of this game after a terrible first 70. The nerves grew around the stadium as West Ham pressed again.
Corner followed corner and Mavropanos rose through sheer strength of will to head home a Solomon cross – what a response. Finally. 2 – 2. Suddenly a new Pablo appeared: running at defences, fighting for every ball – and a driving, late solo run in the box almost won it.
85 minutes gone and the first decent think Kilman did all afternoon was to take a yellow card for the team to deny Millwall a chance to break.
Kanté rightly got his marching orders for denying a goal scoring opportunity having gifted the ball to Kyrell Lisbie, pulling him down with a one-on-one with Hermansen looming. Five minutes to hang on seemed huge, down to ten men. Kanté went from hero to villain in about ten minutes.
The pendulum swung back towards Millwall in the last few minutes, West Ham having the momentum for the preceding 15 in this tense finish: Anyone in Claret and Blue would have leapt at a point after an abject first half.
One last Millwall long throw to survive and the final whistle meant West Ham had somehow rescued a point from game they had no right to draw, after one of their worst first forty five minutes since Potter or Lopetegui’s eras. Could have lost 5-0 in that first half, to be honest, we were so bad. Phew.
Golambeckis should be starting he can play anywhere across backline.
Bowen had a torrid time with their left back and didn’t cope with him.
Conceding early has continued from last season could have laid odds a goal down before 15 mins.
Rescuing a point from 2-0 down was lucky not skill.
Need 40pts by Christmas break at least scoring consistently with a variation of players.
Emulating Liverpool when Salah was there by getting ball down wing who was on half way line and then attack.
Pussey footing around penalty area when taking goal kicks invites problems.
Surely even Nuno can now see that Kilman is , at best , Nationwide league level . He has absolutely no pro football qualities. Dinos spends every game covering for his non existent partner and ends up making mistakes that he rarely made after Xmas last year once Nuno benched him . His mistakes cost us points and hence relegation last season and he is already costing us goals this season . It has to stop .
Dinos is having to cover the inadequacies of the rest of the defence, that’s why he is sometimes exposed and accused of errors.
The official stats were showing us dominating the first half 68% to 32%. Possession – passes – all the other ridiculous stuff.
Seems to me that success is measured by these silly metrics. We were two nil down by half-time but we played a consistent style for those first 45 minutes. We must wake up and realise that these ‘modern’ statistics led parameters are not what is needed for our team to be as great as we can be.
Good coaches and management should be getting the best out of the playing personnel at our disposal. This does not seem to happen from the start of our games. We still look as if we are playing practice matches against the cones and dummies at Rush Green.
Despite them having only one third possession, Millwall had all the impetus and looked by far the better team.
Thankfully Millwall felt the need to defend their advantage and we felt the need to try and score. We did just that. In future games we need to forget about the possession stats and get on with playing with purpose.
Tapping the ball around in defence and playing the ball out with short passes from the goalkeeper is not working and never will. We go nowhere or just don’t get very far. The opposition realise that they are not facing any bombardments or any real threats in their half and confidently dominate the play as we need to drop back all of the time.
It is mostly described as hoofing the ball forward and hoping, but it is much more ‘technical’ than that and we have the players to take advantage of this style. Whatever we do, we must mix up the ways of doing it but pretending we can keep the ball 100% is never going to win us anything.
We have a wonderful opportunity to dominate this Championship division this year. We must not allow blackboard instructions to get in our way.
Play Up Irons. Onwards and upwards. Lets be having you. Go get them from the very start and squeeze the pips until they are dry.
COYI
We can’t keep getting away with our slow sluggish starts, allowing our opponents to get a lead before we even start playing And our apparent inability to prepare his players correctly is down to Nuno. Scoring loads of goals is great of course, but if we are serious about getting out of this division, we have to learn how to defend. I realise that Golambeckis is inexperienced, but I think he is a far superior defender to Kilman, and should be brought in. NOW.
Agree on Golambeckis, give him some playing time and let him know he is part of the future rather than wait until disaster strikes and then throw him in and expect miracles.
We lacked the energy and same fight as Millwall but to be fair way off the pace required . We would have won with more energy and quicker passing . Not the end of the world done well to come back . More from the players and we’re good ⚒
Millwall did what Wrexham and Derby didnt do, and that was put the ball in the net early on when we were starting yet again so badly.
Millwall also had a lad who could turn a throw in into a corner, our only who can do that is Golambekis, it might worth playing him at left back, just for that.
All those misplaced passes ftom everyone in the first half was awful
Pablo helping to turn the game round was good to see
Pleased to see Austbo back and great shot from him, well done Kamte to have the sense after yet another dreadful mistake to take the red card. 3 fantastic goals and an assist versus so many poor errors. Get those out of his game and we have a Premier league player.
Finally, we now know what we’ll do if Bowen gets injured, Solomon down the right and Austbo the left, that is a relief to know
Ps… glad they didnt risk Soucek, and good to see Magassa on the bench again, high hopes he might be a right back at some stage.
First impression… Our defence is still poor.
Awful first 45 and got caught up in the occasion. However, I suppose having never played in one myself I reckon it would be tough to pay against several intellectually challenged cavemen in front of thousands more knuckle draggers.
Anyway, onwards and upwards, Pablo pretty much changed it for us, as always. A great red to get for Kanté and whoever thought getting in a “top” premier league ref fit this fixture needs their heads examining, this was THE worsts ref performance I’ve seen us play for this season and it’s no surprise it was that egotistical tosser Tierney with the whistle.
Aside from some of today’s errors I suspect it’ll be is that comes away feeling like we’ve gained more Millwall thought they had it all sewn up at half time. Strange why they thought that as they were turned over on Wednesday too by Middlesborough. Shame !!
By the way, who on earth started this “Dockers Derby” rubbish like it’s something it’s been called for ever ??
I would have taken that result at the start (I predicted 2-1 to Millwall!) we often struggle when the situation calls for passion and backbone. Hopefully this will have flushed out the 6-0 over confidence
Summed it up well, Martin. Anyway, it seems to me that we were naive to the Millwall threats pre game and to the history in general. Maybe Nuno should do his homework in future and not allow our men to play like a bunch of p*ssies. It was embarrassing!
73 minutes of absolute garbage which should finally silence all of those that were getting carried away with scorelines rather than actually watching what was going on. Get rid of the rose tinted glasses and get in touch with reality. Our defence is an accident waiting to happen every single time they take to the pitch. Bowen has to spend so much time chasing back to do what is definitely not his prime skill (defending) that he doesn’t have that energy burst left that used to take him past defenders so easily. On the plus side, Nuno did at least seem to recognize what was wrong at half time and Pablo, I have to admit, is gradually winning me over with his passion for West Ham. Good to see Austbo back and another non-story shut down. Overall, a horrible performance and I don’t see much changing on the defensive front before January.
Kilman’s skill at getting the ball to swerve away from his head, despite clear positive movement towards it, need scientific investigation.
After that first half, I will happily take the point.
If we do get promoted, and there’s a long way to go, the defence needs a huge makeover.
Mistakes made in this league that go unpunished would see us 3 to 4 down in the 1st half of many an EPL game.
Glad we found a way to nick a point, we won’t always play well, coincidence that Pablo playing resulted in us getting goals and turning it around ? The stats show when he plays we score first well over 60% of the time and win most of the time, he should start every game imho