Having witnessed an exhilarating display against Crystal Palace at the weekend, full of classy goals and creativity, Hammers fans, including myself, will be hoping for much more of the same for the rest of the season.
Thanks in part to the summer signings, particularly Mauro Zarate and Cheikhou Kouyate, who have both made excellent starts to their West Ham careers, we now appear to have the tools at our disposal to start playing football in the manner that everybody wants – attacking and creative, with a powerful central midfield and tricky, clever attackers.
That being said, I think it would be premature to assume that the performance on Saturday will be repeated on a constant basis. Other teams will start to analyse the new style of tactics that are developing, and players like Zarate will not always be given as much space as he was against Palace. And of course West Ham will be coming up against teams in the Premier League that, simply put, have better players than what we do.
That is the reality of the situation, and we, as fans, must stay patient for this reason. Even the likes of Manchester City and Chelsea will find that they have to grind out results in an unattractive manner on occasions if they want to win the league. Zarate won’t be effective every game, and West Ham will be starved of possession for periods in some matches. It is at those times that the fans should stay patient and accept that this will be the case in certain games.
The thing that is really in our favour, in my view, is that we have an alternative style of play to fall back on when necessary. During the last campaign in particular, the positive results that the club managed were, by and large through strong defensive displays with the whole team contributing to protecting the Hammers goal. The vast majority of our goalmouth activity was from crosses from the wing for a big centre forward in the box.
We still have the players to play this way if need be, such as Matthew Jarvis and Stewart Downing on the flanks, and the likes of Carlton Cole, Diafra Sakho and Andy Carroll who can play the target man role. This provides Sam Allardyce with the opportunity to mix up the team’s style of play, and we shouldn’t be afraid of doing so as it will make us much harder to deal with for the opposition.
Hammers supporters should therefore be careful not to expect too much too soon from this potentially exciting new dawn. Getting results is still the most important thing, and this will probably still have to be achieved with a variety of methods. If we still are able to grind out a 1-0 win against one of our rivals, or defend for a point against one of the bigger teams away from home, then that’s fine by me. So we should stay patient, because the chairmen and manager appear to be in the process of building a very decent squad for years to come. Evolution, not revolution is the name of the game.
Excellent and articulate article James, nicely thought out and I could not agree with you more. The David’s and Karen have at times had bad press from many fans, however it is my view that these are some of the best people who have ran our club in the last 40 odd years I have supported West Ham. In the dark days we did not even know the face of our clubs owners, they never communicated with the fans and largely held us in contempt. If you think of how they treated Bobby, then this is no real surprise.
I believe we are on the dawn of an exciting time for West Ham, and we all now need to show what truly great and passionate fans West Ham have. COYI
James, A well balanced view. And, of course, we need to keep our feet on the ground and not expect a Palace type performance and result every week. The Sheff Utd. game proved that. I agree with John, that the owners are visible, and visibly trying to improve the club in every department. We now seem to have found a Plan B style of play. A large swathe of fans have been complaining about Sam’s one style of play and I think we can now see another
option. I’m cautiously optimistic!
Being cautiosly optimistic is spot on – we have a really good squad this season, we have recruited wisely, created quality in depth and have youngsters who played in the Sheffield game pushing for first team inclusion, especially in defence where i think Sam has now realised he can rely on these kids to come in an do a job if necessary – of course there will still be the odd squad member who doesnt fit the bill, imo there are three or four in Vaz Te, CCole, Demel, and probably Obrien, im not saying they wont help this season but they are certainly players we could improve upon to raise the quality of our overall game – patience is the right word as we know we cant change everything overnight, but we have made some big steps this year it seems – Sam will always revert to his tried and tested methods in games, points will always take precident over quality or style in how they are won, thus Nolan is sure to get picked when he is back fit but hopefully the new signings will prove themselves worthy candidates to fill the roles of our illustrious captain in the team and provide Sam with some serious headaches come selection time – i still feel we are light on wingers, Downing is showing some real quality but we need cover for him, Jarvis can be inconsistent and either contribute massively or be obsolete in any given game, he really needs some competition for his spot, preferably someone who is able to play both sides of the pitch- Vaz Te isnt capable of filling that role and Diame does ok but you can see its not his best position – hopefully hammers will keep Reid and Diame – rumours are suggesting we might be in the running for Song, the ex Arsenal midfielder, not a bad acquisition but i think we would be better off covering for wingers with any new addition right now, would love for the club to go after Koponyenka, he is class and would take our play to another level. Anyway, the big plus right now is we now have alternative options for our tactics – hopefully Sam gets them right more often than not and we can push on up the table. COYI.
Its not the players we now have at our disposal that’s the issue…its how the manager will utilise them. Its of no use have a bench full of attacking substitutes with pace and ability if the same old tired, slow and average quality faces are hogging the places (Nolan, O’Brien, Vaz Te, Cole etc etc).
I too am optimistic with the squad. Lets see if they are used properly??