West Ham never seem to makes things easy.
During the first leg against Europa Conference League AEK Larnaca FC, David Moyes team sat back and invited the opposition to attack whilst conceding 14 corners. In the end The Hammers got the tie wrapped up in the return leg to reach the quarter finals but it was not an easy watch.
We also played in precisely the same way during the recent ‘must win’ Premier League game against Southampton, and again against Fulham last weekend. Moyes tactics seem to be to sit back and soak up as much pressure as possible.
In the instances mentioned above, the strategy worked but it doesn’t make for easy viewing as wave after wave of opposition attacks crash on the West Ham goal.
Danny Ings scored his third Hammers goal
True to form West Ham were back at it against KAA Gent who finished the the game peppering Alphonse Areolas goal in search of a winner. It was fraught, nail-biting stuff and I’m not exactly sure why we do it but fortunately The Irons escaped with a draw to take back to the London Stadium.
It wasn’t pretty at all and until Lucas Paqueta was introduced in the 74th minute there was precious little to cheer about.
However West Ham are still in it and I feel reasonably confident that we can make it into the semi-finals but we must improve drastically. Moyes can’t continuously invite opposition attacks to shoot on goal, whilst the tactic might sometimes work it can also fail catastrophically like it did against Brighton and Newcastle.