OPINION
Despite suffering a 1-0 defeat against Tottenham on Saturday there weren’t too many poor performances in the West Ham team.
However, Felipe Anderson was one player who seriously underperformed against Mauricio Pochettino’s side. The 5ft 8in Brazilian didn’t look up to the task from the word go and was substituted off after 55 minutes following an insipid display.
The 25-year-old was careless in possession throughout, and undoubtedly produced the poorest performance of his Hammers career thus far.
He simply didn’t looked like he was interested and was guilty of giving the ball away or running it out of play on more than one occasion.
Additionally, he didn’t do enough to stop Moussa Sissoko in the build up to Erik Lamela’s goal, which eventually cost Manuel Pellegrini’s side dearly.
Being a flair player is all well and good but you need to help your team out as well. Whether that’s pressuring from the front or tracking back it doesn’t matter, but Anderson did neither and left back Aaron Cresswell was horribly exposed as a result.
This should be a wake up call for the player. You cannot have off days like this in the Premier League because you will get punished.
The manager, too, has to take note of what was a disconcerting display from his club record signing. He needs to have a word with Anderson after the game and let him know in no uncertain terms that Saturday’s performance was unacceptable.
His display left his team looking like they were playing with 10 men for large portions of the contest. That simply cannot happen against a team of Spurs’s quality.
Not that Tottenham played particularly well. On another day West Ham could surely have beaten them, and might’ve done today if their brilliant Brazilian was on top form.
Instead they suffered their second defeat in a row, and Anderson needs to take a long look in the mirror tonight ahead of the team’s clash with Leicester next time out.
