Hammer Times - West Ham United Blog

Hardly Sensasianal

Mon, 03 Aug 2009

After watching West Ham play in the Barclays Asia Tournament I was left bitterly disappointed, the reasons being three-fold:

1 - Far too many defensive errors from sodding about and not concentrating, sometimes you just need to clear your lines instead of dallying around.

2 - Not enough forward passes, the midfield and defence were happy enough to pass the ball between them, but they all looked a bit lost when we pushed past the halfway line.

3 - A serious lack of fire power up front. This is a big problem. Cole was isolated and there was NO support from the wide men.

Now I can almost forgive the first one and write it off to a bit of rustiness and pre-season blues, I'm sure when the regular season starts the back four will have much more composed heads on their shoulders. They better.

The second and third can be blended together but they both lead to the same thing: Very Few Goals.

I think we scored 1 goal from open play in our entire pre-season tour of Austria and Asia (please correct me if I'm wrong). One Goal. One. Not only was it just one, but it was the last kick of the game when Beijing were throwing all their men forward.

I'm worried, seriously worried. This 4-3-3 formation WILL NOT work without a couple of midfielders supporting the striker high up the pitch, and the wide men getting involved regularly, it just turns into a defensive 4-5-1. Zola tried the 4-3-3 when he first arrived and we were not getting good results, then he switched to the 4-4-2 and we turned the ship around. It worked well for us. Had we had better strikers at the time than Di Michele and Tristan we could've easily cemented 7th place and be preparing for a European campaign.

If we don't sign (on loan or otherwise) an experienced front man/support striker for Cole and continue to play the 4-3-3 then I have some sincere doubts over the results we will be able to produce.

But that's enough negativity, I guess there were some positives. Collison generally looked lively, hustling up and down the pitch as he and Behrami did so well last year, and Noble was at least trying the killer ball. Jiminez got a harsh welcome to the physical nature of the English game from the Spurs players, but his free kicks and corners were delivered well and we have lacked that threat from set pieces in recent years.