The lads from Hammers Chat are back with an in depth look at the weekend game.
With goalkeeper Adrian revealing he expects a winning performance, the game against West Brom is hopefully one where the team will finally blossom and start erasing the bad vibes that have been floating around the club this week.
Manager Slaven Bilic still has to name the side so our Hammers Chat boys are working on what they think will be the set-up rather than knowing it.
However as always they are passionate and entertaining as they come to their conclusions – catch it all in this on the money Talk a Good Game
Bilic is in a difficult position regarding whether he makes wholesale changes or not. However, he does gets paid the big bucks to make this sort of call. You would like to think he has the experience to get it right.
For me Kouyate is our best central midfielder. He has energy and score goals. You talk about a link between the forwards and the midfield – for me he is the natural choice. You can’t play Lanzini in central midfield – and I think this mentality is part of the problem. Did I hear you compare David Silva to Lanzini and us to Man City – Come on! Last season we looked at our best when we were playing good football but our starting XI always had a very strong backbone.
Perhaps the only good thing Big Sam left us was a strong backbone. Teams didn’t want to get into a battle with the likes of Collins, Tomkins, Reid, Song, Kouyate, Antonio, Carroll. You can then put your ‘flair’ players around them. Away from home we countered on the break but were very difficult to break down. At home we scored headed goal after headed goal and would never be bullied. On Saturday we were bullied by a fat Troy Deeney.
There were two issues I could see last Saturday. 1) Noble hasn’t got the legs to get around the larger Olympic pitch, and 2) We forgot that in order to do all the fancy stuff, first, you need a solid base/core.
Rather than spending big bucks on loads of forwards this transfer window, I really wanted us to go and capture a £15-20m defensive central midfielder. Someone who could cover every blade of grass and let Kouyate go and do his ‘running’ (I think that is what you called it) and scoring.
Against the better teams I would play 2 defensive midfielders and build from there. Perhaps later on the season when things have settled and confidence is high you can then look to only play one and experiment with 3 attacking midfielders supporting 1 or 2 strikers.
I don’t think you change your GK after one bad game. His confidence would fall through the floor. My changes would be Ogbonna for Collins and Arbeloa for Bryam. I would then look to bring in Nordvelt for Lanzini. It is then up to Nordvelt, Kouyate and Noble to win the midfield battle away from home and silence their fans. We would then still have Payet and Antonio supporting Zaza with Lanzini, Feghouli, Calleri and Fletcher on the bench. The longer you can stay in an away game from home the better you can then look to win the game in the second half.
We need to be difficult to beat before we think about bloody top 4 football and competing with the likes of Man City.
P.S as a side note it would be excellent to hear the views of others on these videos. Apologises if I upset anyone or am speaking out of turn but some of the comments are beyond ridiculous and I think come from the heart rather than the head.