We had an interesting discussion in the pub during the Spurs debacle on whether any other club relied on any one player as much as we have relied on Dimitri Payet this season. Everything has been going through Dimitri and with numerous assists and five goals he's obviously going to be a massive loss for the next three months. Man City rely on Aguero a lot, Spurs would miss Harry Kane and Everton Romelu Lukaku, but few teams have had such an obvious star.
Still, you suspect the effect is psychological more than anything else, and our main problems were at the back against Spurs. We have some very good players to replace Payet. Manuel Lanzini is already having a fine season, Alex Song or Mauro Zarate can come into the midfield, Valencia will return in January, and there's the option of playing Carroll and Sakho together. Plus there's £7 million Antonio and Jelavic desperate to get games (and Jelavic did well to set up Lanzini's goal on Sunday).
But what we do need is a bit more creativity from Noble, Kouyate and Moses to make up for his absence. And as Match of the Day pointed out, when teams press like Spurs did, we need to sometimes play the long ball out from the back to bypass them. Even without Payet we still have one of the strongest West Ham teams in many seasons, so for the moment let's remain positive.
4 comments:
We are not a one man team just a poor team.
There is no real quality in any position apart from keeper and Payet. Lanzini is only on loan and it is unlikely he will sign permanently once the bigger clubs come sniffing.
None of the other players are up to much and are average at best when it comes to premier league quality.
Spurs were better in every department and it was lucky we didn't concede a few more goals.
The goal we got was a gimme we never looked like creating a chance from our own play.
Back to the drawing board and hopefully some decent recruits in Jan and in the summer.
The manager has a clue so I'm sure he knows more quality is needed.
I can see why you prefer to be anonymous!
I can see why you prefer to be anonymous!
We played poorly at Spurs but I'd disagree with Anonymous about the lack of quality in other positions; it's surely one of the strongest squads WHU has had and we are still sixth. Admittedly full backs can get exposed defensively but both look good going forward. Reid, Cresswell, Kouyate, Lanzini and Sakho have all had rumoured interest from top six teams and Ogbonna played for a side that won the Champions League so surely can't be that bad… guess we'll find out about their quality now Payet is out.
Post a Comment