On Saturday at the Boleyn ground West Ham went toe to toe with the nouveau-riche heavyweights that are Manchester City…and it was a miss-match as Sam Allardyce’s Hammers found out in ruthless fashion.
Sam’s much heralded 4-6-0 which worked a treat at White Hart Lane a fortnight earlier came unstuck as there were two crucial differences between the Spurs game and Saturday night’s encounter; against Spurs the reason the formation worked so well is because West Ham got the first goal and from then on could play on the counter-attack and pick Tottenham off in spectacular fashion.
Against Man City however they got the all important first goal; from that moment on without a recognised striker it was always going to be a tall order to take the game to them. The other reason the formation worked against Spurs and not City is that Man City are comfortably a better team than Tottenham, the media and their fans may well hype them up as title contenders but in my opinion they are nowhere near the level of Man City.
Uncharacteristic sloppy defensive errors were to prove our downfall; City’s first two goals were avoidable and you simply cannot give a team of their quality a helping hand otherwise they will bury you. To be fair to Big Sam’s gang they did give it a go at times in the 2nd half, knocked the ball around nicely and Stewart Downing, Mark Noble and Ravel Morrison took the fight to City’s superstars; the brief uprising did culminate in Ricardo Vaz Te reducing the arrears but his goal only proved a false dawn.
At 2-1 the fact that Big Sam didn’t have enough faith in Carlton Cole or Mladen Petric to throw either of them on speaks volumes. This team needs Andy Carroll back ASAP and in the meantime Sam could do worse than allow Ricardo Vaz Te to lead the line as he’s now scored in his last 2 games; and why not have young Elliot Lee who seems to score nigh on every game for the development squad on the bench if Sam doesn’t fancy Cole or Petric?
