I can accept Norwich losing away vs whu but that was a rotten performance, although

I do believe there is plenty that can be fixed.

The lack of pace and strength in the side was exposed today, but there’s nothing that can be done about that until January, so there’s no point dwelling on that now.

However, barring the first ten minutes and last fifteen when West Ham sat very deep and looked to play on the counter, the passing was uncharacteristically sloppy during build up play, while there never looked like the possibility of playing a penetrating pass through West Ham’s defence whilst they sat deeper. Quite often it looked like the team wasn’t on the same wave length with mistimed runs or over hit passes. I wouldn’t even give West Ham that much credit for their attempts at high pressing (although they looked really good when I’m a low block), as Norwich were causing many of their own problems today. I expect the team’s passing from deep through to the middle third to be much better than this most weeks.

Buendia in particular was the biggest culprit with sloppy play, passing the ball straight out of play under no pressure and losing possession with silly flicks and poor shielding many times. I’m amazed he stayed on for the entire game (Cantwell should have stayed on), he was that bad. Thankfully he has shown in previous games that he can produce at this level, so hopefully this can just be put down as a bad day for him.

I’ve not seen anything from Trybull (strength is covering the defence and he looks out of his depth at that) or Steipermann (far too clumsy and inconsistent, not a great out ball option at this level against stronger teams) to really suggest they’re premier league quality players. I love both for their contributions last season, particularly the latter, but other players deserve to have a chance. It will be difficult with Trybull right now because of the centre back crisis and Amadou possibly being needed there, but I don’t see why Vrancic can’t be played in the ten position, or even McLean. Both of the latter players are technically superior and have better balance than Marco, which should help in tighter spaces.

I think Leitner is good enough on the ball overall at this level (although poor overall today), but struggles badly when without it. He would really benefit from a strong defensive midfielder next to him. Hopefully Amadou can be that man, or Tettey if Farke is desperate and Amadou needs to play centre back.

Looking at some positives, it’s impossible not to mention Krul, as he made a number of genuinely good saves and distributed well under pressure. Zimmermann coming made a great initial impression before being clogged down by Haller. He’s a huge upgrade on Hanley. I also thought both of the young full backs grew into the game and started to show some quality going forwards. They would both benefit from a move to three at the back, as would the entire team due to a lack of pace going forwards, but there’s no chance of that happening right now...

Regarding Aarons and the aforementioned sloppy passing, I wish the team would mix up the style of play more often in order to be less predictable, especially against teams that can do a job on our midfielders. There was one long diagonal played to Max in the first half that completely opened up the West Ham defence. Cantwell would have scored with a better timed run in what was our best chance, apart from the cross to Drmic late on. The only two real chances came from more direct play, which is needed at this level, as most teams are so quick to reorganise into deeper defensive shapes through fear of being torn apart by a quick transition.

Posted By: Common Sense Police, Aug 31, 17:45:07