I am sorry Stoke did leave loads of space the difference was against Southampton was the like of Fernandes and Kouyate were far more pressing in their roles so players supported Arnautovic and Mario in exploiting it whereas tonight they didn't so left Arnautovic isolated far too often.ChzMff wrote: And I think you’re overlooking that we are West Ham and not Man City. You mention we’re playing the 2nd worst team in the league. Well guess what, we were the 5th worst team in the league and ain’t particularly great ourselves.
The line up was exactly the same as against Southampton however Stoke did not play with the same naievety nor commit masses of players ahead of the ball early on. To go out, gung-ho, in this fixture, would have been both suicidal and stupid. People don’t like hearing it because they’re wrapped up in this weird notion that we should be blowing these sort of teams away but tonight was about not losing and ensuring a relegation rival (yes, rival!) did not leave with any forward momentum.
We made Southampton look worse than us by being positive whereas tonight at times we allowed Stoke to be the better side in the first half at times by conceding ground too easily, I feel had we been positive from kick off like we were for Southampton we would won comfortably tonight against such a poor defence and had it caused them to nick a goal then we would have had 89 or whatever minutes to get an equaliser not 11 so I am not really sure what you point you are trying to make about us being caught out had we been more attacking unlike what actually happened tonight?