There was a telling moment during the first half of West Ham’s game against Fulham at Craven Cottage on Saturday. Tomas Soucek received the ball in the number 10 position, which he had been asked to occupy, and as he did so, striker Michail Antonio made his move to try and run into the space behind Calvin Bassey.
It came as no surprise that Soucek was not capable of producing the required defence-splitting pass, but more tellingly, Antonio was unable to out-muscle or out-pace his opponent. For me, this was the pivotal moment in the game, showing that not only were the tactics wrong, but the personnel chosen to implement them were even worse.
West Ham completed six accurate crosses during the game, most of which came in the second half when neither Soucek nor Antonio were on the pitch. This leads me to wonder why they were selected in the first place.
In essence, Julen Lopetegui chose the wrong tools for the job, as was highlighted by Soucek’s TWO successful forward passes. Armed with data from Saturday’s game, the West Ham head coach will likely see how ineffective his choices were. I suspect Lopetegui already knew, as evidenced by his decision to substitute these two attackers at halftime.
Super Sub the answer to bring back the beast
What is becoming increasingly clear is that the stories we’ve been told—that Lopetegui spent last season studying West Ham—are not true. The Spaniard is starting from scratch, and it’s a painful process as he discovers that Antonio isn’t as quick as he used to be and that Soucek’s effectiveness diminishes when he’s asked to pass rather than get on the end of crosses.
As for Antonio, he seems to be living on past glories, with his famed “beast mode” looking like a thing of the past. At least Soucek has recently performed well against Aston Villa and Crystal Palace, so a simple positional tweak could resolve his issues.
Unfortunately, the same can’t be said for Antonio, who, sadly, hasn’t shown a glimmer of decent play this season. Whatever the Hammers’ boss decides to do against Chelsea this weekend, he cannot repeat the starting line-up that failed him so badly against Fulham.
I still believe that 34 year old Antonio has a part to play, but if we are to truly see him terrorise defences again, his biggest threat may time as a super-sub against a tiring defence.