Before West Ham’s defeat to Aston Villa, Sky Sports pundit Jamie Carragher gave an insight into the Hammers’ January recruitment.
It’s fair to say that neither Taty Castellanos nor Pablo Felipe covered themselves in glory during the defeat at Villa Park. That said, with the exception of Dinos Mavropanos, hardly anyone came out of the game with any credit.
But for the second game running, West Ham registered only one shot on target during the game, and on both occasions they were headers from central defenders.
And it’s fair to say that Carragher has noticed the Hammers’ lack of firepower from the frontmen when he spoke about the club’s chances in the Premier League relegation fight.
“I think a lot has been made about what Nuno did in the January transfer market in terms of bringing in two strikers, and I don’t think they’ve been that special.
It’s been more about the wide players, with Jarrod Bowen and Summerville on that left-hand side.”
Carragher nails West Ham’s attacking problem
That’s pretty much the nail on the head. Both Taty and Pablo’s prodigious work rate has allowed the likes of Bowen and Summerville to flourish. But unfortunately, when just one of them is absent, the £47m strike force don’t appear to have the necessary firepower to threaten the opposition’s goal.
Pablo is being played in the wrong postion and Taty is not getting any service from Bowen or from the midfield players he being asked to just chase around the midfielders do not give him any passes they are just defenders not creating anything for the forwards and Bowen is being given to much to do he is defending more than going forward
Spot on – only it usually takes me a bout 300 words to say the same. Like Tyso pretty much says, I also don’t think they should be singled out as being at fault – not in the least.
I’m mainly concerned manager resorting to his old defensive ways that lost the team so many matches and points and that midfield/attack not being used correctly after it started so well. Match against Wolves will be determinant for me, not re. points or wins, but managerial approach for the relegation run-in.
I don’t really care what that [edit] says. Both have been instrumental to us punching our way out of relegation. Castellanos has scored a few and came close at Villa and Pablo is still very young g and shows promise. I’m nowhere near ready to throw either under the bus.
please don’t write insults or else they’ll get auto-deleted. lucky I managed to fix this one by hand. the term you used- would you want someone to call you, or your family that?
I don’t think either player is a genuine striker. But not sure we can blame them too much for Sundays performance as I’m struggling to know where they were supposed to be playing in the rear guard disaster-class. Pablo looked like he was playing as part of the defence. They both had 1 chance Tatty didn’t do to bad with his header Pablo blazed over and should have scored but it would help if they were playing in positions where they may have some impact. Playing the sort of formation we did against city is okay when it works when it doesn’t it’s dire.
They were desperate punts by desperate owners.
“A world-class team in a world-class stadium”.
Funny that. Why do we find ourselves playing in a multi-purpose ex-athletics arena, voted the worst in the PL by some margin, on the cusp of yet another relegation?
Taty and Pablo present virtually no goal threat but are both high energy and high mileage. That may be enough to survive in a relegation scrap as it does enable others, but it’s not enough for a successful league campaign or to prevail against decent teams in cups. It improves us on what we were but not to a notably different level.