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Comments
And Coufal was arguably the best RB in the league last year
I agree it's not quite as good this year, particularly Coufal, but fullback imo isn't a huge concern
I have faith in Johnson, think he's looked class at RB when he's played and I think Ashby is a great prospect
LB we need to get rid of Masuaku as a.) He's not good enough and b.) He's constantly injured
Moyes just has to be braver and give Johnson a chance
Coufal is doing nowhere near enough at the moment. Against ASM next weekend he could be in big trouble on current form. Would be a tough ask for Johnson to come against one of the best wingers in the league, but I don't think he's phased by too much.
I just worry that maybe Moyes doesn't have the faith in Johnson that the fans have in him. He could become our starting RB next season (needs to work on his final third contributions to get there) but he needs to be settled in one position really. He can't get any rhythm when he's in and out of the team in various positions.
A LB is an absolute must in the summer (someone to replace Cresswell as starting LB rather than just providing cover). A RB probably isn't needed but Coufal and Johnson need to step it up a notch.
The thing with Cresswell is that he hasn’t been out of form in the same way as Vlad has, for me. He’s been average, and made a couple of errors. He has always made small errors, but you forgive it / ignore it because of his threat going forward. If he can start crossing the ball like he was early season then I’ll be more than happy
The thing for me is that so many of our players are out of form at the moment. Antonio, Fornals, Soucek and Coufal are miles behind what they're capable of at their best, Benrahma is definitely below his early season form, Fabianski seems on a downward curve (maybe age related), even Cresswell is having less impact going forward than last season and the start of this whilst still showing his usual frailties at the back.
Antonio looks dead on his feet atm, he's already played nearly as many games this season (for us and Jamaica) as he's managed in any full season since he joined us (in 6 previous seasons the most he's played is 38, and he's on 35 already, which is at least 8 more than 3 out of the last 4 seasons).
Soucek is a shadow of the man he's been for the season and a half before 21/22. I accept that there may understandably be a slight drop off in goals as Rice seems to have been given more licence to get forward this season than before, but the pairing of Rice and Soucek seems way less dominant in CM than it was, despite Rice noticeably improving his all round game this season.
Fornals is another who seems to have lost his way. For much of last season he was one of our best players, although I wonder if this was in part due to our being able to play so effectively on the break; he might not be as fast as Bowen or Lingard for example, but showed he has a quick mind and the ability to play a quick ball which was much more useful when we had the space in which to counter attack into. Maybe he's being hamstrung by the fact some teams are showing us more respect and not committing men forward in quite the way they were. Maybe being a new dad is also a factor, but one thing is obvious; he's not the player he was for us last season atm.
Really not sure what's going on with Coufal; from being a huge asset last season both offensively and defensively, he deservedly got an improved contract but seems to have fallen off a cliff. He didn't start today, but I suspect few of us would have wanted him to anyway.
On top of those 4, Benrahma started the season brightly but has really gone off the boil, Cresswell is not managing to live up to his level of last season/early this season, and I seem to have less and less confidence in Fabianski as time goes on, especially wrt to leaving his line (I'm getting the feeling I had with Jussi, that he's definitely past his best but we're playing him regardless, in Jussi's case at least a season if not 2 too long).
It's easy to say that players should be able to play once, even twice a week, but the fact that most of the players I've made reference to have been nailed on starters week in week out with very little rest maybe suggests that this really isn't the case; in this day and age football really is a squad game, yet the performances of our bench players against Kidderminster shows, on the whole, they're nowhere near the level our starters are capable of when they're at their best. What seems obvious is that because of this the starters can't be rested as the drop off in quality is too great, but that also means they're unable to produce anywhere near their best due to being exhausted either physically or mentally.
Of the summer signings, Vlasic and Kral have largely been disappointing (Kral must really not be showing anything if he can't be risked to rest Soucek), so effectively the only addition we've made in the last 2 windows has been Zouma, and that's nowhere near enough to try and maintain an upward trajectory for the club.
Players like Haller, or Lukaku, are very good when played in a certain way but have limitations that make them look awful when used otherwise.
What happens is he gets the sack during the building process and a new manager comes in and has a different way of playing and needs new types of player again and so it goes on.
Obviously if a manager is wrong for a club he is wrong but if a club have one they believe in they are better of giving time.
I also think it is highly likely that Rice and Bowen could leave in the summer, which will leave us with such a weakened team.
Win our next game with a good performance and i am sure my feelings will be less negative.
Don’t get it.
I’ve supported this club for more years than I care to remember and believe me this is not normal for West Ham.
Perhaps some people are expecting more after last season’s success and that finishing eighth or something is failure to them.
We haven't addressed the obvious problems in the squad in the last two windows and it means that we have no option but to play out of form and fatigued players.
Moyes signed Benrahma, Kral, Vlasic and Areola but doesn't seem to trust any of them. That to me is a concern. He doesn't think that in world football there was a striker available that could challenge Antonio for his spot. A striker that has scored 4 goals since the summer window closed. That to me is a concern.
Fans expectations are usually governed by what they see happening at the club. We finished 6th last season, and Moyes had openly spoken about the desire to carry on competing for top six. I don't think it's an unfair expectation that the club do all they can to do make that happen, but their (non) actions in January shows that they didn't, IMO.
Up until this season my criteria for success was always to be a consistent top 10 team:
- Finish in the top 10 for 4+ consecutive seasons
- Safe in the league (40+ points) by end of March
- Spent the 2nd half of the season in the top 10
- Positive goal difference
Once we can achieve that consistency, then we can look at pushing on and cracking the top 6. I don’t want to go back to those years of being a yo-yo team, fighting top 6 one year and fighting a relegation battle the next.
As far as I can tell we’ve never achieved top 10 for 4 seasons in a row, so that’s a pretty good 1st milestone.
I don’t watch us play wearing rose tinted specs and I get as miffed as anyone else when we lose or draw but to hear some people talk you’d never realise that we were playing against opposition who are busting a gut to win or stop us winning,it’s always how badly we played and how poor particular players are.
We’re still in the cup, and have got European knockout football to look forward to so why not enjoy it while we can?
Who's to say that we wouldn't have signed a couple of great new players and we'd still be no better off - see Trippier at Newcastle - except with reduced funds available for transfers and wages going forward.
The belief that signings would have definitely led to more points than we achieved in the last few matches is just that, a belief. And unknowable.
Personally, I think we dodged a bullet ;-)
If, as seems likely, our season tails off and we finish outside of the top 6 or 7, we increase the chance that one or both decide it's time to move on. We already face bringing in a large number of players in the summer (LB, CB, DM x 2 (seems unlikely we'll keep Kral given the lack of playing time he's received, even with Soucek being out of form), RW, CF as a bare minimum), so we could easily be looking at 7 or 8 replacements.
Given how reluctant we are to move early in any transfer window for fear of missing a bargain later on, even if we keep Rice and Bowen we will really be down to bare bones at the start of next season, even more reason for them to want to move on. So we're faced with the prospect of trying to integrate 8 new signings with a limited or non-existant pre-season together, we can all see how that's going to pan out next season.
If, however, we'd have brought in even 2 signings in January, when we were flying high in the Premier League (and so more attractive to potential signings) we would not only have likely finished higher in the league/have better cup runs, but would be much more likely to hang on to Rice and Bowen, so maybe only needing 4 new signings instead of 8.
Let's make no mistake, Rice is the best player we've had on our books for a very long time, and, although I don't see him staying with us forever, even one more season would help us recruit a much better class of player, to help us move on. As it is, I fear the lack of ambition being shown by the club will be a major factor in his premature departure. Imo this could affect our performances for many seasons to come.
Signings aren't everything. Every club wants to be a bit better than they are already. Every club wants to build on a good season. If it were so straightforward we'd all be at Man City's level in no time.
Everton and Villa spent big in January and seem worse than they were before. Wolves didn't really sign anybody of note and they're flying.
In any case, I think we've lost sight of the (mostly) dross we've seen over the last 20 years. We had an amazing season last season and this one has been far from bad.
We will be able to see what happened by the end of the season, where our season sat at the end of December and where it ended. That will tell the story.
Instead now we are looking to be going into Summer with less than 18 recognised first teamers when contracts are up and several of those 18 aren't premier league standard at all or have barely featured this season.
I have a different opinion and I think the lack of reinforcements in January and the lack of an alternative striker to Antonio over the past 12 months is a big contributing factor to the burnout and poor performances since January that we are witnessing.
His biggest attribute is he’s a beast and normally destroys defenders when he’s running at them but his touch is woeful and his brain limited so I think it’s a dilemma.