Eintracht Frankfurt (H) - Thursday 28th April, 8pm

OutcastLondoner

I thought Benrahma was good when he came on. Almost scored a wonder goal straight away, had a nice little flick interchanging with Cresswell and not sure how no one got onto the low cross and a few other good bits. One time he lost it he did really well hunting it down. When he does things quickly he's so much better. He needs to come on with that mentality always.

claretandbluesky

Having listened to Moyes and observed his demeanour in the interview he seems to have the same view as most on here, we were not good and he is disappointed, but we are not out of it. Lets hope he can change things to ensure we approach next week with the necessary game plan.

I am deflated but not without hope. When we play Liverpool or City I never expect anything as I know they are better than us and so just hope for something, Frankfurt are not better than us, they simply set up better for us last night than we did for them. We can change that however and in turn change the course of this tie.

First goal next week will change how everything looks.

steve

Like others has said there the best team we have faced .And sooner or later we have to score .And they look very good at counter attacking .Wont be easy thats for sure

BubblesNeverDies

BBC match report from Simon Stone:

Jarrod Bowen came agonisingly close to snatching a draw for the hosts in stoppage time when his overhead kick from a Declan Rice cross bounced down off the crossbar.
But that would have been harsh on Frankfurt, who were a constant threat on the counter-attack and showed why they had won away at Real Betis and Barcelona already in the knockout stages.

Harsh, really?

IronHerb

Perhaps he should have looked at the stats below his report -

Home Team West Ham Away Team Frankfurt
Possession Home 53% Away 47%
Shots Home 15 Away 8
Shots on Target Home 2 Away 4
Corners Home 8 Away 3
Fouls Home 3 Away 10

mike

Load of great comments here but one thing that i noticed( i was at the game) was the agonising slow build up from defence.
Areola to Zouma to Dawson back to Zouma back to Areola.
At the start of the season we were known as this great counter attacking side.Not any more,have we been sussed out?

alderz

mike said:

Load of great comments here but one thing that i noticed( i was at the game) was the agonising slow build up from defence.
Areola to Zouma to Dawson back to Zouma back to Areola.
At the start of the season we were known as this great counter attacking side.Not any more,have we been sussed out?

I think we're still a great counter attacking side, but when the opposition lets you have the ball and wants to counter attack too, then it's a lot harder to do that. They will come out a bit more next week as it's at home, and we will be able to counter. It's a shame they're ahead, because I think they would have had to come out even more if they weren't winning.

BubblesNeverDies

Would a different formation be better? We seemed to get overrun in midfield and our forward players had to fall back to try and retrieve the ball so that when we did so, they were out of position. Does Moyes use a 433 often?

Areola
Coufal Dawson Zouma Cresswell
Fornals Rice Soucek
Bowen Antonio Benrahma

I know Fornals was partly at fault for their 1st goal, but the cross should never have been allowed to be made.

EF were so much more fluid in transition, whereas we (as Mike said above) took far too long just to get the ball into midfield from the back. I also think that our playing out wide suited them as they were able to close us down so easily. If we play through the middle we have an out ball to left and right.

(Incoming - dives for cover )

Lukerz

Moyes (& the players) will have learnt a lot from that game. Frankfurt have won 1 of their last 11 home games.

There is still a massive chance for us to make the final. Moyes will need to get the team, formation & tactics right & the players put in a good performance, but we will definitely be better for the experience of last night in that second leg.

Lukerz

I’d be tempted to make a couple of tweaks given we are now trailing in the second leg:

Areola
Coufal - Dawson - Zouma - Cresswell
Soucek - Rice
Bowen - Fornals - Benrahma
Antonio

Lukerz

I thought it was an odd comment from Moyes to say
‘maybe we don’t quite have the quality for this level’ after the defeat, given we have beaten Sevilla & Lyon & topped our group. I thought that was an odd thing to say unless it’s a motivational thing to get a reaction out of the side next week.

buffybegood

Lukerz said:

I thought it was an odd comment from Moyes to say
‘maybe we don’t quite have the quality for this level’ after the defeat, given we have beaten Sevilla & Lyon & topped our group. I thought that was an odd thing to say unless it’s a motivational thing to get a reaction out of the side next week.

Or maybe he's managing expectations; with 2 first choice defenders likely to be coming back into their team after suspension, it's not going to be easy to win over there, especially as they can sit back and look to counter (which is when they're most dangerous) as they're already ahead in the tie.

alderz

Lukerz said:

I thought it was an odd comment from Moyes to say
‘maybe we don’t quite have the quality for this level’ after the defeat, given we have beaten Sevilla & Lyon & topped our group. I thought that was an odd thing to say unless it’s a motivational thing to get a reaction out of the side next week.

I think it’s a motivational thing

IronHerb

Both Lyon and Eintracht have shown that they are above us in technique, same as City and Liverpool do, but we get by on cohesion and work rate. Nothing odd in that statement imo.

Yeoldhammer

Much like against Sevilla the first goal will be huge, we get that to silence the crowd early doors and level the tie we are very much in the game. I fear should Eintracht get the first goal it will be curtains as they can go back to their counterattacking game.

Lukerz

The more I think about this, the more confident I feel.

Pearces_Left_Foot

I think being the away team suits both team more as the home team tends to have more onus on them to take the initiative to attack so they can counter attack

OldCastleSwift

Lukerz said:

The more I think about this, the more confident I feel.

I'm going the other way.

Please convince me.

claretandbluesky

It could yet work in our favour as Moyes does have a tendency to try and shut up shop and had we gone to Frankfurt 1-0 up that may have been his focus all week. We are better attacking however and this may free us up.

IronHerb

Well, their home form against our away form: -

Bundesliga H
P16 W4 D6 L6 F19 A21 GD-2
Europa Cup H
P5 W1 D4 L0 F8 A6 GD2
TOTAL H
P21 W5 D10 L6 F27 A27 GD0

Premier League A
P17 W6 D3 L8 F22 A22 GD0
Europa Cup A
P5 W3 D1 L1 F9 A3 GD6
Domestic Cups A
P4 W2 D0 L2 F5 A6 GD-1
TOTAL A
P26 W11 D4 L11 F36 A31 GD5

Bazshuayi

We need a sneaky set piece first goal then measured countering. Theyre 1 up and may choose to have an 'away' mindset sitting back and countering us (especially if we get desperate).

1-0 to us and 5-3 on pens to get to the final

Bazshuayi

now I have typed that I think they'll score so we need a 2-1 then pens to get through

Lukerz

I see a 3-1 away win

ScotHammer

The crowd will be crucial, and we need to shut them up quickly. They did it quickly at the
London Stadium, and it seemed to take West Ham and the home crowd a while to recover. If West Ham score early we can do this. Sitting on the fence on this one!
COYI ⚒