Slaven Bilic has been absolutely fantastic this season. He has made West Ham a real force in the Premier League and put us in contention for a Champions League spot. All of this while delivering some top football that has propelled the club beyond where us fans felt that we were capable.
Every manager gets things wrong at some point during a season. It just seems unfortunate that what could be one of Slaven Bilic’s only mistakes of the season could have cost his side an FA Cup semi final spot.
Enner Valencia has had a lot of hate from West Ham fans in the past 24 hours. He didn’t play to high enough standards and his end product was non existent.
However, the real problem with Valencia was his inability to track back (this isn’t his fault, he is more of a striker than a winger) which means that Michail Antonio was often left trying to mark two men. We were cut open from United’s left far too many times.
If Bilic is going to play Antonio at RB rather than Tomkins, then surely it would have made sense to play either three in midfield or a winger that will work hard to track back.
Playing Valencia at all was mistake number one.
Mistake number two was even more surprising from Slaven Bilic.
All season Bilic has gained a reputation for making necessary changes at the right times. If something isn’t working he will fix it early, often before half time so that the problems can be eradicated quickly before damage is done.
Against Manchester United, Bilic waited. No change at half time surprised me, I was waiting to see Obiang warming up to replace Valencia or Collins on and Tomkins to right back with Antonio pushed further forward. But when it got to the 60th minute, at 0-1 down and the same team were still under performing it was a shock.
To let an average United side dominate us for 70 minutes was hard to take, but every fan could see something was wrong. Maybe Bilic is very trusting in his players, and believed that they would come good. But with Kouyate and Noble not playing anywhere near their best, Obiang was surely needed to sort out the midfield at half time or just after, long before Rashford scored.
Of course, Bilic can’t control it if his players don’t perform. Other than Randolph, no player performed well enough and the manager can’t do anything about this. But we have come to expect that Bilic will haul players off if they aren’t performing and will make tactical tweaks when they are necessary, like he did against Arsenal, but it was too little too late against Manchester United, and it may have cost us a semi final place against Everton.
