West Ham vs Brighton
Build up
As soon as the lineups were announced, it was fairly obvious what would happen, as shown pretty clearly by Tom here:
West Ham, playing five defenders and three central midfielders, would struggle to create anything. Most of the season, West Ham have relied on crossing — either in open play or via set pieces. The main way West Ham do this is down the left flank, with Masuaku, Cresswell & Fornals combining. Replacing Masuaku with a 20 year old right back and Fornals with a 33 year old who moves like a 43 year old was always going to make this harder. Of the 10 West Ham players this season with the best xA per 90 West Ham were starting 5 of them, but only 1 of the top 5, and I’m fairly sure a lot of Cresswell’s come from set pieces.
There was also almost no other progressive passing in the team to help replace this. Don’t get me wrong, Rice and Soucek are good players, but Rice is a good DM with average passing and Soucek is basically the second Fellaini — he’s good in both boxes and can break up play, but also isn’t a great passer. Add in the fact that Noble just cannot get involved in Premier League games anymore, and it meant almost all creation in the first half would fall to Coufal, Bowen and Haller.
Match Summary
As expected, we created basically nothing in the first half. 3 shots, with a combined xG of 0.1, compared to 9 shots and an xG of 0.78. Add in to that a scoreline of 0–1, and things weren’t great. We also just looked incredibly disjointed, unable to get on the ball or produce anything that looked vaguely like a coherent attacking plan.
I think a big part of this was that instead of a CAM playing and drifting left to interlink with the LCB & LWB, there was Mark Noble, who just cannot move anymore. West Ham got stuck in their own half, created nothing, and never looked any good going forwards. We were decent defensively, until the 43rd minute when Rice’s interception fell straight to Maupay — however this is the risk you take when you can’t get out of your own half and just let the other team dominate.
Things improved in the second half. Bringing on Lanzini meant that one of the three CMs actually liked to get forwards and drift into the left halfspace. This got Johnson involved more, as there was someone to pass to and overlap, meaning he was able to actually replace some of Masuaku’s production which was sorely missed. This also allowed Cresswell to push forwards more, and there was some better attacking play.
Yarmolenko didn’t provide anything particularly different to Bowen, but as the team as a whole could get forwards better, he was able to take up better positions and get more involved in attacks, including the cross which led to the equaliser.
Despite having a slightly less defensive team, things were actually better defensively — Brighton once again got one good chance and converted it, but this was from a set play, something West Ham have been excellent at all season, so I’m more willing to chalk this up to “shit happens” than bad tactics. Apart from this chance, Brighton created 3 other shots with a combined xG of 0.12, so not a lot.
The other West Ham goal was from a set piece, which wasn’t exactly surprising as 39% of our goals have been set pieces all season. After that, there were a few more West Ham chances in the final minutes, but none were great and a draw was probably a fair result.
Conclusion/analysis
To me Moyes made two big errors in this game; the team selection, and only bringing on two subs.
The first I’ve already touched on, but I can’t for the life of me figure out what he was trying to do. It seemed like he wanted Noble to play the Fornals/Lanzini role of CAM drifting to the left. Noble is a good passer, but he’s never been great at intricate one touch passing, and definitely isn’t now. I actually think Johnson played OK, and he obviously scored, but he was never going to be able to do what Masuaku does, so I don’t know how Moyes thought West Ham would get the ball forwards. Maybe he hoped we would crowd the middle with 3 true CMs, dominate the ball and win set plays? Anyway, it was awful, and I’m glad he changed it.
The other was not making another sub. I don’t think in the festive period you should ever leave subs unused, since players have to get through so many minutes that you should rotate as much as possible — but also when you consider the relative lack of Brighton threat, there was a possibility to try to win this game late on.
Said Benrahma has created two assists in 273 minutes. This is wildly above his xA of 0.58, but he’s also got the 4th best xA per 90 and the 7th best xG+xA per 90 of our squad. As a pair of fresh legs, I think it would have made sense to bring him on, especially as Haller could not get involved. I know he was ready to come on before the equaliser, so I guess this was a case of Moyes being Moyes and not wanting to attack any more than necessary, especially as Benrahma can be a bit suspect in defense.
Anyway, overall a decent point against a team that is better than their position in the table suggests, but I think that in the long run we need to look at how we play when Masuaku is out, how we get Haller (who was non-existent) more involved, and what on earth we do if one of Soucek or Rice can’t play as Noble definitely can’t be the replacement.
About me
I don’t really know why I’m writing this — it’s lockdown, I’m off work and I’m bored I guess. I’ve considered trying to write some kind of stats based analysis of West Ham for a while now, so this felt like as good a time to start as any. I’m going to try to write these semi regularly, but who knows if that will last. Let me know what you think!
All stats from Understat.
