West Ham Utd 2-0 Huddersfield Town (11/09/17)

[hammerman11]

I thought we had a lot on the floor with some great play by iron mic. I would agree we tend to overdo the ball to carroll but they couldnt handle him so why not.

a good performance and it seems no pleasing some people. maybe watch barca on the floor all the time but you make the best of the players you have.

against wba I would play on the floor and save carroll for spurs.However I expect bilic to play him and a 1-0 away win

[somerset-hammer]

Tony Pulis will be licking his lips, at the prospect of us turning up with a repeat of this game plan.

[ChazHammer]

Tony Pulis will be licking his lips, at the prospect of us turning up with a repeat of this game plan.

Presumably because you think they'll beat us...?
I think that if we play like we did against Huddersfield, then we have a decent chance against WBA personally...

I get that people want us to win through passing football, but if we started trying to play like Arsenal, we'd get crucified. I'm all for mixing it up a bit more and not always going long but when you lose 3 on the trot you get hammered, and then when a win comes along, you get hammered too...too much bloody hammering from the hammers

[somerset-hammer]

Presumably because you think they'll beat us...?

Not necessarily Chaz, just that Pulis and his back line of CB's usually tend to deal with Carroll.

[the pink palermo]

Tony Pulis will be licking his lips, at the prospect of us turning up with a repeat of this game plan.

Me too, it's why I'm sticking with my prediction of 4 points from our first 6 matches .

['stone hammer]

Really impressed with the performance, considering how half-arsed the Newcastle and Man U games were. Thoroughly earned that win. Fair play to Huddersfield, they didn't do much but I think they'll just about stay up
This season.

Only negative for me out of our players was Kouyate; can't really remember him doing much apart from fluffing a chance. Maybe I need to watch more closely. Obiang on the other hand snuffed out virtually everything. Is he typically a DM? I had him down as more of a playmaker, but decent tackler regardless.

[spod]

Recently we've faltered against pressing teams - how many goals have we given away this season already through a rushed, misplaced pass or a poor bit of control?
If you don't trust yourself to pass out of the press, route on is your next best option, and against Huddersfield we did it well. It wasn't aimless hoofball. Most of the passes were well targeted.

I'm pretty sure we won't play the same way against West Brom, mind.

[Clacton-ammer]

Surprised to read so many were happy with what they watched on Monday night .

A good result , but launching the ball forward, bypassing midfield, isn't really that sophisticated is it ?

Not if we are being honest with ourselves

We play on the floor ? .

I enjoyed it, as for me most were not launches, as it dropped on one of our nuts, so they ere long passes, plus Bilic cam out and explained the tactics, and all made more sense. It made for a decent game for me, saying that, if after the next few games, even if we win, we have played that way, then there was no point getting the little man up top, and I will be pissed at watching that type of football week in week out.

[Fishdo]

Surprised to read so many were happy with what they watched on Monday night .

A good result , but launching the ball forward, bypassing midfield, isn't really that sophisticated is it ?

Not if we are being honest with ourselves

We play on the floor ? .

But Pinkie doesn't that only add credence to the fact it was a mistake that Sully made but not sticking his hand in his pocket for Carvalho or someone similar... or even a loan

Without Manu or Arnie to take some pressure off the midfield and with what we have wasn't it the most pragmatic way to approach the game ?

[Hamburger]

.
Great to see Antonio given a bit of freedom. He was all over the place and a right handful. He's wasted isolated wide right but when he cut in he created havoc. Just don't get Bilic's idiotic need to play players out of their comfort zone. It's clear Antonio thrives on being a 'marauder' and is often our best player (as well as top scorer) so don't play him out on the corner flag ffs. Putting Hernandez left wing another blunder, you could see he was pissed off. Are we building a team around sick note Carroll now?
.

[mushy]

I thought we had a lot on the floor with some great play by iron mic. I would agree we tend to overdo the ball to carroll but they couldnt handle him so why not.

Carroll did win a lot in the air and Collins especially did kick it long to him, but did anything much come of that style of play?
My recollection was that most of the headers won were knocked on to Huddersfield players, did our most prolific tactic from Monday produce anything much in the way of chances?

[the pink palermo]

But Pinkie doesn't that only add credence to the fact it was a mistake that Sully made but not sticking his hand in his pocket for Carvalho or someone similar... or even a loan

Without Manu or Arnie to take some pressure off the midfield and with what we have wasn't it the most pragmatic way to approach the game ?

I'm inclined to agree , it's why I've made a point of commenting .

The Manager is working with what he has, not what he wishes he had .

I like the fact we got the ball in their box a lot , it's how we got it there and who was running in, or not, to get on the end of things .

Stylisitically we're a bit of a mess .Winning ugly is fine every now and again , in fact it's an essential skill , but I'd be very surprised if people were happy to pay to watch it every week .

Providing nobody gets injured against West Brom I expect the first we'll see of Slav's true first XI is against Spurs .

The players will know who's got the shirt then .

[Beavis Danzig]

huddersfield are a special case where i expect far more confident and well put together teams than ours to assume similar tactics. they are a poundland borussia dortmund and their whole game is smothering you through the middle, we used tactics which completely nullified what they do best and left the shop with a pocketful of points.

[nr637]

West Ham United 2 - 0 Huddersfield Town
Venue: London Stadium (London)
Attendance: 56,977

Watching the game on TV it was amazing to see the amount of empty seats amongst the crowd all over the stadium. I reckon you could take at least 20,000 off the figure above. I know they will repeat that the figure includes season ticket holders, but the actual tickets that were scanned in on the night!


Anyone able to find an official attendance figure instead of the standard stadium issue, 56,000+........

[wildkard]

20k off! Not likely. A few thousand more like. The fact that people were moving back into empty seats away from the front probably made it look worse than it was. Will probably be around 30k for the Bolton game mind you.

[Morocco Mole]

I agree with Das Nut Lock, I thought we were fantastic, especially in the first half. Pace, power, aggression and sheer will to win, reminiscent of the good old days under Sa...well, anyway, I loved it.

Fonte's best game for us for ages.

Allardyce would've got slaughtered for playing like that and I am amused at the number of posters suddenly applauding our "high energy", "mixing it up" "direct" football.

I couldn't care less personally, you play to your strengths and we don't have a squad of one and two touch passers. A good win and performance....especially without the ball.

[Humbug]

I didn't think the direct hoof ball to AC worked very well because they were expecting that and were cleaning any 'knock-ons' quite easily. It's when we started making runs down the wings and crossing closer to their goal lines that gave them lots of trouble (because they can't watch the player and the ball trajectory at the same time). AC's general play and short passes on the ground and closing down of their defenders made a lot of difference and 'showed' the way to the rest. We won that game because we were stronger, fitter and battled for everything for 94 mins but I doubt we can do the same for another 34 games. Imho, we will still need to make things happen playing intelligent football (ie. players knowing when to make a run behind or through the defence confident that their teammate can make the quality pass).

[hammerdivone]

You've posted a photo from around 30 minutes before kick-off to back up your point?

This was taken about 7 minutes before kick-off



At kick off it was pretty much full although it did empty a bit due to the rain though

[YorksHammer]

Carroll did win a lot in the air

14 out of 17 aerial battles, according to Whoscored.

[Colours never run]

I thought we had a lot on the floor with some great play by iron mic. I would agree we tend to overdo the ball to carroll but they couldnt handle him so why not.

a good performance and it seems no pleasing some people. maybe watch barca on the floor all the time but you make the best of the players you have.

against wba I would play on the floor and save carroll for spurs.However I expect bilic to play him and a 1-0 away win

Exactly that.