Rice and Holland get thumbs up from Jurcevic
Rice was clear man of the match pick for most people with Holland showing great skill and potential on the wide right of three attacking midfielders.
And afterwards Slaven Bilic’s No 2 said: “Both of them were good today, but not only today, they were good during the training sessions and in some friendly games in Austria with Fulham and Sturm Graz.
“They are young, they are fresh, they have some quality and they have been a really positive surprise in this pre-season camp.
“For me personally, Nathan was really good as he was in our last friendly games. Against Werder, he tried to go one-against-one in many situations. He’s a very dangerous player, very quick, but also very, very young. Together with Declan, he showed maybe we can think also about him.”
But once again the finish touch was missing and Jurcevic said: “We saw some positives in the second half in terms of ball possession, good ball circulation but we must make more chances to score goals.
“For some players, for example Jose and Marko, this was their first game back in pre-season and we’re expecting some injured players to come back, so we’re optimistic for the future.”
With the Hammers playing the ball on the floor for much of the game a change of style looks on the cards and the assistant boss said: “First we will see how our system will be with Chicharito because we also have Marko Arnautovic, but without Carroll we must change our style because we don’t have one big centre forward who plays mostly in the box, enabling us to play the long ball.
These players have quality and I hope we will be better than last year.”