CandH’s exclusive blogger Hammers legend Ray ‘Tonka’ Stewart gives his verdict on last night’s Old Trafford performance!
Let me say this straight away – nobody loves Mark Noble and what he’s done for this club than me. Amazing and loyal servant!
However, the minute I saw the line up last night I knew we were very unlikely to win the game – and I don’t understand why we changed a winning system to that extent.
We didn’t need Nobes when Declan and Tomas have been working so well together – with Fornals injured we needed Benrahma or Lanzini as we saw when they came on.
Mark has already shown what we can rely on him from now these days – coming on as a sub to close the game down. He’s not going to be a player we use when we need to go and win a game.
It was obvious from even before the start it wasn’t going to work and the fluid football we have seen for most of the season was no longer on view.
The truth was that we didn’t turn up for a long time and when we did it was all too late – I didn’t understand it last night and I don’t get it this morning.
Mikey Antonio was entirely isolated up front but I have to say he doesn’t look 100 per cent fit although hen he did get service there were a couple of nice balls into the box from him but no one forward enough to get involved.
It was disappointing and it’s difficult to have to blame anybody because we have been so special this year.
But we don’t want any repeats.
Exactly my point in previous posts, Noble should never start a game imho, he definitely upsets the rhythm of Rice and Soucek, not sure exactly what his role is /was often runs around like a headless chicken… Sorry should have been given a coaching /backroom job… Not a new contract 😕
If there is any ‘blame’ then it has to be levelled at management, not the team. There seems to be a culture of being scared of the ‘top six’ sides bred into them.
As was evident from when the technical players came on, we possessed the ability to get at them.
My concern is that Moyes is breeding the spontaneity out of Benrahma in his desire for work rate, and Bowen is going back over, not improving and invariably looks to go backwards and come inside to play square balls too often instead of taking his player on.
Antonio is playing within himself and is not presenting much of his known threat to central defenders.
Last night it was clear that Luke Shaw was on fire, so why did we keep playing down his side?
Moyes must not let his unnecessary caution permeate the team. We were capable of taking them on, but left ourselves insufficient time to do so.
That was a real chance gone begging and was immensely disappointing to say the least,
I totally agree, Moyes should of gone into the game with a positive team selection instead of laying his game plan out for a draw from the first whistle, every time we play a “big 6” club his negativity shows in the team selection & It disrupts the players confidence, playing Noble against a team with pace like James , Rashford, Greenwood , he was always going to be up against it. I think Moyes has done well this season, although he has been helped with no fans but i do feel feel if we are to progress & actually seriously compete with the so called bigger clubs, then its time to move Moyes on & finally get Raffa Benitez in. COYI
Was very very disappointed with the best we can hope for is a point mentality against the so called bigger sides” Theres a saying you generally get in life what you think you deserve. No more. West Ham are good enough to give any team a game. But will not do so if they dont believe it. Very disappointed. When we went a goal down started playing and showed man u werent vey special.
Sounded to me in the his post-match interview that David Moyes accepted that he was wrong, and wouldn’t make the same selection again. For me, that sounds good enough.
Hope you’re right, you have to win these games from time to time to build confidence that we are a top team and going out with the attitude that we are going to cause teams problems is e way forward. Our biggest threat is set plays so we should look to win free kicks and corners up the field. Antonio has a long throw and we have players good in the air so why aren’t we using that as another weapon ?
Couldn’t agree more, Tonka!