West Ham v Man City, Saturday 24th October, 12.30

yoyo

Fantastic start and better than I thought we'd do

WHU_Champo_league_in_7_years

Hope he is back for Liverpool, really need him to play

Do wonder if Moyes will change the formation after Liverpool, when we have games where we will expect to have more possession and be a bit more adventurous

buffybegood

How is Dermot Gallagher defending the VAR refusal of the penalty? The defender 100% takes Antonio out before he touches the ball. Tough one for the ref maybe, but VAR shows it's clearly a penalty.

Fortuneseeker

Haller tried to close their defenders down & at one stage came back to try to put a tackle in. He played his part in a very good team effort. All of which he has been criticised for not doing. He will score goals with the proper service.

alderz

I thought Haller was ok, but he just isn’t Antonio. It also didn’t help him that Bowen came off for him. Antonio gets great support from Bowen, but nobody was close to Haller when he came on. That said, he really needs to put himself about a bit more.

For me, it’s six of one half a dozen of the other. He needs to adapt to the way we play, but we also can’t expect him to play the same as Antonio when it’s not his game.

buffybegood

welovethehammers said:

I’m not one who usually complains about refs but how poor was Taylor today!?

Taylor is nearly always poor against us, he's definitely biased imo.

alderz

Yarmolenko on the other hand, oh my that was a poor performance. At least with him you know it was a real one off. Sometimes he’s not super effective, but I’ve never seen him be just straight awful

WHU_Champo_league_in_7_years

Yea Yarmo just didn't have a good game

Think he tried to do too much, just kept on taking too many touches when it was better he just got rid of it

Definately a talented player but he's clearly better off the front foot, not tracking back which he had to do a lot

OldCastleSwift

WHU_Champo_league_in_7_years said:

Hope he is back for Liverpool, really need him to play

Do wonder if Moyes will change the formation after Liverpool, when we have games where we will expect to have more possession and be a bit more adventurous

Has to stick with five at a the back I think, but maybe two up front, so 3-5-2 rather than 3-4-3:

Fab
Balbuena Ogbonna Cresswell
Coufal Soucek Fornals Rice Masuaku
Bowen Haller

Bowen would have to play right alongside Haller to Brigg the best out of him.

Thing is, Antonio getting injured was always likely, which is why I'm cross that the club did nothing to provide any cover for it.

Pearces_Left_Foot

Would have thought yarmolenko would have been better up top he plays there for Ukraine and left Bowen out wide as an outlet. Still a great point we just need to put this level of performance in against the Fulham’s etc of the league now

Cuz1

Moyes saying Antonio injury not to bad more of a crampy thing phew

Pearces_Left_Foot

The good thing is these are games we lost last season

ianbishoplegend

Haller needs to watch videos of Shearer, Drogba and Sheringham. Even without support he needs to find a way to be much more involved I.e he needs to evolve his game also - not just wait for it to evolve around him

EXETERHAMMER

Fantastic result. Moyes has certainly created a team that is playing hard to beat.

Jorderz_Moyes_will_be_Moyes

Fabianski looks to be getting back to his best, too, after a shaky few months.

jay_in_cpt

Great result, am sure we all would’ve taken that score before the game...such an improvement on the last matches against them...
Pity about Antonio, let’s hope it was more precautionary....

Re Taylor- he is probably considered England’s top ref ( where FIFA are concerned )...
He is what he is , but don’t think biased is a fair assessment IMO...
Pity about our first 2 results because the last four have been very impressive..

Well done Moyes and squad....👏🏻👏🏻

buffybegood

jay_in_cpt said:

He is what he is , but don’t think biased is a fair assessment IMO...

He makes a lot more poor decisions against us than for us, that's a bias imo.

jay_in_cpt

Fair enough Buffy, that’s your opinion and I respect it, but personally don’t agree!!

Let’s just look at the bigger picture, we got a point and Taylor didn’t rule out our goal for a very possible handball 👍🏻

Hammerwombat

I don’t want to be controversial or get modded, but am I the only person who thinks Raheem Sterling is a great player, but he runs like a girl🤭

alderz

Hammerwombat said:

I don’t want to be controversial or get modded, but am I the only person who thinks Raheem Sterling is a great player, but he runs like a girl🤭

He runs like a T-Rex. I’m sure there would be plenty of girls and women who might disagree that that’s how they run

MIAHammer

Excellent point but I’m baffled by our strategy. Instead of making a like for like substitution we move Bowen away from a position he was having success with only to then replace him later. And then we don’t use our 3rd substitute.

MIAHammer

Fortuneseeker said:

Haller tried to close their defenders down & at one stage came back to try to put a tackle in. He played his part in a very good team effort. All of which he has been criticised for not doing. He will score goals with the proper service.

Maybe it’s my imagination, but we do seem to lose the ability to cross the ball whenever Haller comes on. As has been said, it didn’t help to Bowen had to come off to make room.

whupathman

I will conintue not to comment on match threads until the game starts

EXETERHAMMER

I was frustrated by Haller. However, until we play him as part of a pairing up front I will not write him off.

MrsGrey

alderz said:

Hammerwombat said:

I don’t want to be controversial or get modded, but am I the only person who thinks Raheem Sterling is a great player, but he runs like a girl🤭

He runs like a T-Rex. I’m sure there would be plenty of girls and women who might disagree that that’s how they run

He runs like his mum.

And his daughter runs like him.

Google it - he's talked about it in interviews. His mum was an athlete ( runner). And his daughter supports Liverpool.

ianbishoplegend

I actually find the loose hand style comfortable and less energetic at times. I only do it in long slow runs (with no one looking though). When I go back to fixed arms it takes al little bit more thought and effort

Hammerwombat

alderz said:

Hammerwombat said:

I don’t want to be controversial or get modded, but am I the only person who thinks Raheem Sterling is a great player, but he runs like a girl🤭

He runs like a T-Rex. I’m sure there would be plenty of girls and women who might disagree that that’s how they run

3 women in the house this afternoon, and 1 man (me). Apparently I am incorrect in my observation as all 3 could beat me in any race. Agreed. And as for the T.rex, I have to take Marc Bolan into consideration as he danced like a girl. Which he did, and was rather fantastic at it.

steve

Late to this but Saw the game ,Have to say we seem to have some guts at last ,Plus our fitness level looks better ,That must be down to moyes ,yarmo had a bad afternoon ,But the lads stuck at it so lots of credit to them for that .We do seem to be scoring some nice looking goals as well .Man of the match for me was Masuaku Not perfect But looks a real player under Moyes

thornburyiron

How nice to read statements like “Foden came on to rescue a point for City”.

claretandbluesky

Already 8 points up on last seasons results so a great start!

I think after we play Liverpool we will find a new challenge as we have been playing teams who will come onto us allowing us to break out and attack, this has shown we have improved our defending and are able to counter with enough speed to cause problems. I think Bowen and Antonio have been instrumental in this. Now we will see if we can unlock defences that sit back a little more, on paper this should not be a problem with the likes of Fornels, Yarmalenko, Lanzini and the addition of Benrahma should help, but it is a new challenge to measure ourselves against.