Sam Allardyce came up with a mixture of frank “we weren’t good enough” admissions and “the ref got it wrong “excuses at the end of a Hammers House of Horrors show against Southampton.
“The “we weren’t good enough” announcement would of course have been enough but regulars at Sam pressers know that he will never leave it at that.
He said following the 3-1 defeat: “”We weren’t good enough. Southampton taught us a lesson, we weren’t sharp enough and didn’t retain the ball as well as they did, close down as well as they did and gifted them two goals.
As much as they were in control and on top of the game we’ve lost two very stupid goals from set-pieces.
“The big problem I had with the corner [for the second goal] was that it was a goal-kick of course.
“I’ve had a look at it on the laptop and can the referee see it? Was he blocked and why didn’t he make the right decision?
Having looked at it from Mike Dean’s position he’s got it horribly wrong when we don’t need it to go against us.”
Nothing about the perfectly good disallowed goal then. The referee was not a factor. Allardyce’s inability to think on his feet and adjust tactics as the game was obviously disappearing was.
Same starting tactics for home and away. Strikers (Cole and Vaz Te) who are unable to finish the 2 or 3 chances that come up.
Where is the creativity in midfield going to come from? Why sign exciting players to play a dull role?
Noble looked hobbled and awful after that tackle and a braver manager would have seen it and brought him off. It was unfair to him to make him the liability he was in the second half.
Well said
We have heard it all before , so I wll say again go sam go
I totally agree you buy players that are there to bring some class to the team but you still start your same sticker and you have so much talent on the bench
I was hoping that his contract would contain some sort of reduced pay off, once the season had begun and that was the reason for sticking with Sam.
The investment in new players is useless unless they are played in their correct positions. You wouldn’t send C&H out to report on an Aussie rules game because its not his specialism, in that respect a striker, who has made their name scoring goals from that position will not be prolific playing wide left or right. The player will need split seconds to decide what to do, where as if he was in his usual position it would come naturally.
The 4.3.3 or 4.5.1 set up isn’t utilised correctly either, if you look at Liverpool last season, they had Sturridge, Suarez and Stirling. All players capable of quick passing and interchanging positions. Not the big lad up front and then two winger types who need to cut inside to naturally play the ball. This obviously slows everything down.
I’m going to watch the Ladies play against Keynsham today just to cheer me up.
The problem I had with the goal was that it was the second time in about ten minutes that they fell asleep at a corner. The first time it was blamed on Vaz Te and Noble gave him a full volley of abuse – but lo and behold exactly the same thing happens again – and Southampton score a really soft goal – a shambles!
I blame BFS for the lack of organisation and professionalism in the team!