Newcastle United couldn’t have chosen a better team to play than West Ham as a warm-up for their League Cup final against Liverpool.
Despite brief flurries of activity at the beginning of each half, Eddie Howe’s Magpies won the game at a canter without ever really having to break stride.
West Ham manager Graham Potter had the luxury of over a week on the training pitch with his players, and the defence certainly looked well-drilled for most of the game. Unfortunately, there seemed to be little difference in terms of attacking play from the midfield, who had just about got the job done against Leicester City.
Unfortunately for the Hammers, Newcastle United at half-throttle are far more dangerous than our last opponents, and the truth is they cruised to an easy victory.
Realistically, West Ham only started the game with two attacking players in Mohammed Kudus and Jarrod Bowen. By the end of the game, Potter had begun to introduce more creativity to the midfield and deployed a couple of strikers, but by that time, it was too little, too late.
Ultimately, the Hammers’ lack of ambition in the starting line-up resulted in zero points—which is pretty much exactly what we deserved.
I’m not suggesting last night was great, as we did huff and puff a lot with very little end product, but I do feel this piece is giving Newcastle way too much credit. They looked as likely to score as we did, and got lucky with their goal, which on another day would have been ruled out by VAR. No doubt Potter has an awful lot of work to do, but to suggest that New castle were some kind of super team that never got out of third gear all night is disingenuous in the extreme…
We need a few players a GK a box to box CM
And a striker
But our main problem is when we do have money available we spend it so bad ! And instead of adding
2 players that improve your squad every season
We just go out and buy 5/6 average players every couple of seasons ,sensible investment is needed but we just don’t seem to be able to do that !
I feel that we need at least 2 new midfielders one ball winner who drives forward with the ball like yousef fofana does.And another creative play who can take free kicks and corners and find our forwards with long diagonal passes.We also need a new young goalkeeper ramsdale should be available along with Kyle-walker peters and Harwood- bells at seasons end! Then two fast young strikers Liam delap and another to play in the channels.Sullivan had better dust of his cheque book as we need to spend big money now to back potter to the hilt to at least challenge for top 6/7 next season.We have fallen way behind many of our rivals in the last two seasons by not investing in young hungry players!
Kev 100% agree. Trouble is all the excitement and promises of change of style is already beginning to evaporate. They cannot play out from the back and just resort to Areola kicking long to 2 small forwards which immediately gives back possession and invites pressure. His distribution is so poor then we have the same ow midfielders who cannot get box to box to link with our attack and just go sideways and backwards. Why is he bringing on bloody Ings and not giving Ferguson and Guilherme enough minutes? Where are our talented Academy players instead of the same pathetic substitions every week? So done with all the hype every season. and starting to wonder if Potter has what it takes to turn us into a European competition team again. Wrong tactics again last night and he looked as though he hadn’t a clue how to change it after his subs feed to make any impact.