An Honest Season Appraisal

[9898]

Season mostly dominated by poor management

When the midfield moved slightly further forward the second half of the season their personal limitations were badly exposed. Dawson showed what he is, a Championship centre half who makes 2 or 3 terrible errors every game.

Cresswell is great in the attacking third but badly exposed in the defensive third.



Without Rice the whole midfield is a shambles.


For large parts of the season Antonio was Dowie levels. Control appalling. Dives all the time. Lazy. Greedy. No ability to see what is happening around him.

The coaching and management has been dreadful. Benrhama, Fornals, Coufal, Cresswell, Dawson, Soucek, Antonio have regressed throughout the season.
The tactic of 8 or 9 man defence and then play for set pieces is not good management or clever,it is just a scared game plan that resonates a scared, inferiority complex to the players.
Not one clever tactical change all season.
Not one youth player excelled, or allowed to excel. Moyes, as he has been all his career, is a youth team blocker. Old players his standard. The 'Red Bull' comments he made were the most laughable comments.
Take away the Norwich game, and the fact that we scored 12 goals in our last 13 PL games should tell the story and have every fan massively worried.

Can’t argue with any of what I’ve quoted above .
Been saying pretty much the same forever though I reckon your final paragraph is more to do with Moyes and his transfer policy than anything else you said .

Moyes (in when we’re doing well but) out (when we’re not)

Let's be clear, EVERYTHING to do with the team is solely on Moyes.
Win or lose always out for me. Moyes has made us everything we used to despise but Sky supporters, who just want to go on Twitter and boast about league positions, don't care about ANYTHING but boastability.
Afraid to say we are a club with no soul. The Olympic stadium is a perfect stadium for the club we have become - Fake, soulless, cold.

[9898]

Season mostly dominated by poor management and coaching.

Defence
Defence was living on the edge the first half of the season even though Moyes had 5 midfielders 5 metres in front of them.
When the midfield moved slightly further forward the second half of the season their personal limitations were badly exposed. Dawson showed what he is, a Championship centre half who makes 2 or 3 terrible errors every game.
Zouma is just a horrible defender to anyone who sees beyond a 12 foot leap. Season in and Moyes and the coaching staff have still not coached him into the basics of knowing his starting positions and knowing when to go forward or stay.
Coufal is a Czech league defender.
Cresswell is great in the attacking third but badly exposed in the defensive third.

Midfield
Soucek is a problem. Worst player in the team yet Moyes builds the team around him. Go figure. Oh, I forgot, 6'4" is why the team is built around him.
Without Rice the whole midfield is a shambles.

Forwards
For large parts of the season Antonio was Dowie levels. Control appalling. Dives all the time. Lazy. Greedy. No ability to see what is happening around him.

The coaching and management has been dreadful. Benrhama, Fornals, Coufal, Cresswell, Dawson, Soucek, Antonio have regressed throughout the season.
The tactic of 8 or 9 man defence and then play for set pieces is not good management or clever,it is just a scared game plan that resonates a scared, inferiority complex to the players.
Not one clever tactical change all season.
Not one youth player excelled, or allowed to excel. Moyes, as he has been all his career, is a youth team blocker. Old players his standard. The 'Red Bull' comments he made were the most laughable comments.
Take away the Norwich game, and the fact that we scored 12 goals in our last 13 PL games should tell the story and have every fan massively worried.

This team is as much un-West Hama s any Allardyce team.
By January next season there will be serious fan discontent.

Not bad for a crap team finishing 7th,considering the season before last,we'd been fighting relegation,(apart from one year) every year for the past 8 years?I think many of us would have taken the last 2 years,in the time we'd been in the PL.

Like many on here will vouch,Moyes has his faults,but overall,you cannot knock what his done.

I bet if we won the PL,you would still be criticising the team...What I find weird about you,is that you never find fault with our owners?

Please tell me what the current owners have done that is so much worse, or different, than previous owners?

[eskimo joe]

Like many on here will vouch,Moyes has his faults,but overall,you cannot knock what his done.

I bet if we won the PL,you would still be criticising the team...What I find weird about you,is that you never find fault with our owners?

I think the fact that we gained fewer points in the league this season is a valid criticism. If this is an assessment of Moyes and the coaching staff trotting out the "tiredness" excuse won't wash because we knew we would be competing in the Europa League and the coaching staff would have factored this into their planning. They were happy with a smallish squad and it backfired. But having said that additional players would only have made a difference if they were of the necessary quality and not simply squad fillers.

I'm certainly not saying last season was a failure but I'm not buying into the "wasn't it great to have a cup run" mantra either. Planning for a forthcoming season should factor in the pressure of additional matches, including the possibility of those extra matches.

Next season , as an absolute minimum, we should be looking at getting back to our points tally of 2020/21..

We could have finished the season in 6th with 6 points less than the season before, so is position in the league or points gained a sign of progress?! In our case now both went backwards.but it doesn't negate the fact that had we won the last game we would have finished the league in 6th with less points than the previous.

Also add to that we had more games so you could have an argument for fatigue either mental or physical. I put it down to the former together with poor management in the transfer market putting pressure on players in matche's we could have rotated in had we had the squad or........

[9898]

I think the fact that we gained fewer points in the league this season is a valid criticism. If this is an assessment of Moyes and the coaching staff trotting out the "tiredness" excuse won't wash because we knew we would be competing in the Europa League and the coaching staff would have factored this into their planning. They were happy with a smallish squad and it backfired. But having said that additional players would only have made a difference if they were of the necessary quality and not simply squad fillers.

I'm certainly not saying last season was a failure but I'm not buying into the "wasn't it great to have a cup run" mantra either. Planning for a forthcoming season should factor in the pressure of additional matches, including the possibility of those extra matches.

Next season , as an absolute minimum, we should be looking at getting back to our points tally of 2020/21..

We could have finished the season in 6th with 6 points less than the season before, so is position in the league or points gained a sign of progress?! In our case now both went backwards.but it doesn't negate the fact that had we won the last game we would have finished the league in 6th with less points than the previous.

Also add to that we had more games so you could have an argument for fatigue either mental or physical. I put it down to the former together with poor management in the transfer market putting pressure on players in matche's we could have rotated in and we had the squad or........

Rotation is a myth.
Liverpool have pretty a constant 7 or 8 players every game while playing higher pressure games than us. Ditto Man City.

[eskimo joe]

We could have finished the season in 6th with 6 points less than the season before, so is position in the league or points gained a sign of progress?! In our case now both went backwards.but it doesn't negate the fact that had we won the last game we would have finished the league in 6th with less points than the previous.

Also add to that we had more games so you could have an argument for fatigue either mental or physical. I put it down to the former together with poor management in the transfer market putting pressure on players in matche's we could have rotated in and we had the squad or........

Rotation is a myth.
Liverpool have pretty a constant 7 or 8 players every game while playing higher pressure games than us. Ditto Man City.

there is nothing stopping Moyes using other than the usual in certain positions in certain games. But he doesn't and can't in some cases, too chicken.

[9898]

Rotation is a myth.
Liverpool have pretty a constant 7 or 8 players every game while playing higher pressure games than us. Ditto Man City.

there is nothing stopping Moyes using other than the usual in certain positions in certain games. But he doesn't and can't in some cases, too chicken.

Agree.
How can you sympathise with a person who CHOOSES to hurt themselves? Personally feel the squad is better than the performances under Moyes.

[Whiskyman]

I think the fact that we gained fewer points in the league this season is a valid criticism. If this is an assessment of Moyes and the coaching staff trotting out the "tiredness" excuse won't wash because we knew we would be competing in the Europa League and the coaching staff would have factored this into their planning. They were happy with a smallish squad and it backfired. But having said that additional players would only have made a difference if they were of the necessary quality and not simply squad fillers.

I'm certainly not saying last season was a failure but I'm not buying into the "wasn't it great to have a cup run" mantra either. Planning for a forthcoming season should factor in the pressure of additional matches, including the possibility of those extra matches.

Next season , as an absolute minimum, we should be looking at getting back to our points tally of 2020/21..

We could have finished the season in 6th with 6 points less than the season before, so is position in the league or points gained a sign of progress?! In our case now both went backwards.but it doesn't negate the fact that had we won the last game we would have finished the league in 6th with less points than the previous.

Also add to that we had more games so you could have an argument for fatigue either mental or physical. I put it down to the former together with poor management in the transfer market putting pressure on players in matche's we could have rotated in had we had the squad or........

Personally I think points gained is the criteria to judge "progress" by although I can understand why some would disagree. Points gained is an indication of how well, or badly, a team has done compared with it's own prior performance. I have discounted the fatigue argument because everybody KNEW a European campaign was ahead and clearly made the decision they were happy with the squad as it stood. If that proved to be a mistake it is a mistake that can legitimately be laid at their door.

[eskimo joe]

We could have finished the season in 6th with 6 points less than the season before, so is position in the league or points gained a sign of progress?! In our case now both went backwards.but it doesn't negate the fact that had we won the last game we would have finished the league in 6th with less points than the previous.

Also add to that we had more games so you could have an argument for fatigue either mental or physical. I put it down to the former together with poor management in the transfer market putting pressure on players in matche's we could have rotated in had we had the squad or........

Personally I think points gained is the criteria to judge "progress" by although I can understand why some would disagree. Points gained is an indication of how well, or badly, a team has done compared with it's own prior performance. I have discounted the fatigue argument because everybody KNEW a European campaign was ahead and clearly made the decision they were happy with the squad as it stood. If that proved to be a mistake it is a mistake that can legitimately be laid at their door.

Ok I understand what you are saying, but for the sake of debate. Imagine we finished on the same points as the previous and instead of getting 7 of them from Liverpool , Chelsea and city we got them from Brighton, Leeds and Soton, would you classify that as standing still or a little step backwards?

[Whiskyman]

..What I find weird about you,is that you never find fault with our owners?

Just for the sake of debate I'm going to poke the hornet's nest. First of all cards on table I can't stand Sullivan, who I have met briefly during my business career years ago, so this is in no way a defence of him and the other ownership. But that said I have yet to see an owner miss an open goal, give away a penalty or get sent off twice in important European fixtures.

They are owners whose reason for being owners is to make money for themselves. Pure and simple. Clearly they are doing that, anyone who can read a balance sheet can see it as the accounts are a matter of public record. So in that respect they are achieving their objective and no doubt consider themselves to have been successful, particularly as they will trouser a very tidy sum indeed when, eventually, they sell up. Whether you or I like it or not that can't be denied. If we were fortunate enough to be shareholders we would be delighted with the performance of our investment. I don't know the exact figure they paid for the business, because if I remember correctly it was done in about 3 stages but I do know it was for a lot less than it would be sold for today.

So what's to criticise ? You and I know what criticism will always be thrown at club owners but is it realistic to do so ? With your business head on why would you want to release millions of pounds to be spent on "playing assets" with no guarantee they would improve the financial performance of the business. As long as we customers, either by buying season tickets, club merchandise or paying our Sky subs, continue to throw money at the business (and of course this doesn't only apply to "customers" of West Ham), why on earth would the management of a profit making cash cow feel the need to change the business model.?

It's one of the reasons I always have a chuckle when I read on the various forums , or, even better, see the click bait presenters wanking themselves into a frenzy over Kretinsky's wealth, all the assumptions that wealthy owners = big spenders. We all know that's not how it works. There have only been two owners whose reason for buying a football club has not been to make more money. One of those is Manchester City who see their club as a promotional vehicle for the UAE and Roman Abramovich. I could possibly also have mentioned Jack Walker of Blackburn but even Blackburn, after his death, were sold for a tidy profit compared with what Walker originally pauid.

[Whiskyman]

Personally I think points gained is the criteria to judge "progress" by although I can understand why some would disagree. Points gained is an indication of how well, or badly, a team has done compared with it's own prior performance. I have discounted the fatigue argument because everybody KNEW a European campaign was ahead and clearly made the decision they were happy with the squad as it stood. If that proved to be a mistake it is a mistake that can legitimately be laid at their door.

Ok I understand what you are saying, but for the sake of debate. Imagine we finished on the same points as the previous and instead of getting 7 of them from Liverpool , Chelsea and city we got them from Brighton, Leeds and Soton, would you classify that as standing still or a little step backwards?

I don't think you can take matches in isolation tbh. I'd judge the season as a whole. We could probably all cherry pick certain matches in certain seasons. For example when Bilic was manager we beat Arsenal and Liverpool fairly convincingly away from home. But we also managed to lose spectacularly at home to Swansea.