St Slaven’s West Ham Slip Up at St James’ Park
“They deserved to beat us.”
One simple phrase from West Ham boss Slaven Bilić summed up his side’s performance against Newcastle on Saturday.
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Article by Liam Clarkson
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Article by Liam Clarkson
In every facet of the game, the Hammers were outmuscled and outthought, with their patient build-up play no match for the Magpies’ aggressive passing game.
Amazingly, the East Londoners conceded 23 shots on goal, ten of those being on target. Were it not for their keeper Adrián, who made several excellent saves, the scoreline could have become much uglier.
Jonjo Shelvey’s first 15 minutes in black and white produced two high-quality Newcastle goals. The England international executed two fine passes which led to goals each time, one of those passes going down as an assist to Georginio Wijnaldum.
No doubt West Ham would have had a plan to limit the involvement of the former Swan, but it certainly didn’t show. The whole of the defence gave Shelvey and his teammates far too much space to work with and were deservedly punished.
The centre-backs in particular, James Collins and Angelo Ogbonna, had very poor games in terms of marking. The space which they afforded to Aleksandar Mitrović, Ayoze Pérez and Wijnaldum undoubtedly led to the two goals within the first 15 minutes of play.
This meant that the Hammers had to spend the remaining 75 minutes of regulation time trying to claw back a point, something which a team harbouring top-4 ambitions should not be doing against a bottom-3 club.
In terms of positives for West Ham, the returns of Cheikhou Kouyaté and Victor Moses were encouraging. Kouyaté’s strength and precise passing has been badly missed by West Ham in his absence, and his strong performance helped to balance out the poor efforts of Pedro Obiang and Mark Noble, both of whom showed poor ball distribution and little steel in defence.
As for Moses, his energy and pace allowed the Irons to show much more attacking threat, despite the lack of goals in the time he was on the field. His return should also lead to greater competition between the wingers in the squad.
The whole team could do with an injection of energy given their opponents next Saturday: Manchester City. Don’t be fooled by the Hammers’ fortunate win at the Etihad earlier in the season; the Cityzens are heavy favourites, and deservedly so following their 4-0 thumping of Crystal Palace.
Sergio Agüero’s two goals on Saturday clearly showed that he’s now fit and firing, putting him in prime contention to become the League’s most lethal striker once again.
Should the West Ham defence give him or any other City players the kind of space they afforded Newcastle, the Boleyn faithful could be in for an unpleasant evening at Upton Park.
The likely return to the starting line-up of Winston Reid will be a most welcome one, as the New Zealander regularly stands up in the big games (look no further than his last league start against Manchester united).
If West Ham do produce the kind of attacking spark they have showed in their previous giant-killing performances however, David could well triumph over Goliath once again.
© e-Media Group 2015 All rights reserved no part of this document or this website may be reproduced without consent of @e_media_group.
In terms of positives for West Ham, the returns of Cheikhou Kouyaté and Victor Moses were encouraging. Kouyaté’s strength and precise passing has been badly missed by West Ham in his absence, and his strong performance helped to balance out the poor efforts of Pedro Obiang and Mark Noble, both of whom showed poor ball distribution and little steel in defence.
As for Moses, his energy and pace allowed the Irons to show much more attacking threat, despite the lack of goals in the time he was on the field. His return should also lead to greater competition between the wingers in the squad.
The whole team could do with an injection of energy given their opponents next Saturday: Manchester City. Don’t be fooled by the Hammers’ fortunate win at the Etihad earlier in the season; the Cityzens are heavy favourites, and deservedly so following their 4-0 thumping of Crystal Palace.
Sergio Agüero’s two goals on Saturday clearly showed that he’s now fit and firing, putting him in prime contention to become the League’s most lethal striker once again.
Should the West Ham defence give him or any other City players the kind of space they afforded Newcastle, the Boleyn faithful could be in for an unpleasant evening at Upton Park.
The likely return to the starting line-up of Winston Reid will be a most welcome one, as the New Zealander regularly stands up in the big games (look no further than his last league start against Manchester united).
If West Ham do produce the kind of attacking spark they have showed in their previous giant-killing performances however, David could well triumph over Goliath once again.
© e-Media Group 2015 All rights reserved no part of this document or this website may be reproduced without consent of @e_media_group.
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