Taking a look at the goals again from last night in the ‘cold light of day’, one point is abundantly clear: West Ham’s performance represented a team-spilt personality disorder of enormous proportions. Going forward, before injuries hobbled the attack, the Hammers were creative, expansive, skilled and aggressive. Defending – after their key players were removed and the attacking threat was nullified- The Hammers were again backing off, negative and fragile.
At the heart of this ‘multiple personality’ issue for Graham Potter to diagnose and solve is the conundrum that is Lucas Paquetá: diving all over the pitch and embarrassing his team mates, Paquetá actually contributed to the Hammers conceding the first goal, rolling around and being ignored by both sides and the referee as Villa score.
Paul Robinson on the sky’s commentary team summed it up as Aston Villa celebrated:”That was a really poor dive by Paqueta.”
And then of course, to counterbalance that, was his early aggression, energetic, closing down and the super strike to help West Ham take the lead. Potter needs to be blunt with his Brazilian and lay it on the line. We can all see the cheating, rolling around, and it isn’t acceptable.
Stay on your feet, or get off the pitch – show us the genius and not the gremlin, Lucas!
Paqueta is an embarrassment. It’s one thing to dive but he is so crap at it.
I didn’t notice Lucas Paquetá diving all over the pitch and embarrassing his team mates against Villa.
I did notice that we played so much better in our last two games with Soucek at the heart of the team wearing the Captain’s armband and showing us the leadership as he shows when playing for his country.
COYI
I’ve wondered what Paqueta adds for a long time. For every brilliant through ball that leads to a goal there’s one of these dives that can be detrimental or a ball lost in a dangerous position when a simple pass would have done that cost us a goal.
I thought Paqueta had one of his best games this season last night. People forget that’s he’s not really a No 10….. he can create but isn’t a playmaker. He won the ball back plenty of times last night and wins a lot of free kicks. At the same time I don’t like his diving and over reacting either.
With you. He has amazing skills, plays two-way, and is fouled constantly. I do believe he occasionally embellishes but having watched “Head Trauma” Chelsea try and prevent attacks when out of position, Paqueta’s behaviour seems trivial.
Wan Bissaka went missing for the second goal – as usual for him. He stands off players until it’s too late. Noticeable how the right side fell apart after Summerville wasn’t there to cover his errors.
also Martin if you were fouled as often as Paqueta and given no protection by the referees you would end up jumping to avoid the next ‘Leg Breaker’ coming in!
‘jumping up’ yes, throwing my self to the floor.. erm.. not even in Sunday league footy!
Watch a Chelsea match (drink before) if you want to see Olympic diving. Their players’ heads start at the naval.
They all do it to varying degrees of success. Even my local 3 Liga club are a bunch of divers… especially in the opposition’s penalty box. 🤔 I hate it!!! That and feigning injury. It’s interesting how seldom the medics get on the pitch in a game.
I think if potter had just replaced summerville with guilherme and put wan basaka at right full we would have won that game .I love vlad but he just can’t cut it in the prem anymore
Absolutely. If Lopetegui had replaced Summerville with Coufal there would have been uproar. As a new manager Potter would have been aware of keeping Coufal sweet though having left him out in favour of playing Scarles.