No ideal win, but progress at West Ham under Moyes is obvious

When a new manager comes in, he is obviously hoping for an early win. Whilst Moyes hasn’t got that yet, there is obvious progress at West Ham.

If you’ve watched West Ham this season, you’ll know it hasn’t been pretty. All parts of the team have lacked quality and they really haven’t gelled. Add in a few individual errors and it’s no surprise they are in the relegation zone. The only surprise is they’re not bottom.

However in the past two matches under Moyes there has been progress. Players look more interested and there doesn’t seem to be systematic flaws in the defence like there was under Bilic. Some individual errors remain, but that isn’t the managers fault. He has to trust the players where he can.

To highlight the improvements, I’ve tried to pick matches that are similar in opposition and situation in the Moyes v Bilic era. And if you look at the stats, it’s a massive improvement from the Hammers.

Leicester (H), Brighton (H)

If you look at the plot above, it’s obvious the game wasn’t exactly a game of excitement. However it’s a drastic improvement on previous games we’ve had at the London Stadium. Leicester had very few chances in dangerous areas and their goal came from an individual error from Ogbonna. It also shows that the Hammers were being more uniform in the creation of their own chances. Compare above to the chart against Brighton below.

Against Brighton the Hammers were just shooting from wherever they could. There was no real creation strategy and you can see from the Brighton chances that we let them into dangerous areas far too often. And it’s not just a one off comparison. If we take the away matches against Watfrod and Palace you can again see an improvement.

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Watford (A), Palace (A)

As you can see above, the fact we came out of this game with a draw was a miracle. Only a great goal from Ayew and Palace’s poor finishing/Hart’s great saves kept us in it. Palace should have outscored us even without the penalty. There was no plan to keep Palace at bay and no plan to actually fashion regular chances. There’s not even any evidence of set piece chances in the game against Palace.

Below, against Watford, things changed. Despite Watford having a good number of chances, they were not in as dangerous areas. In fact West Ham had the better chances that match. It was the individual quality that let the side down.

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The Hammers fashioned better chances and kept the home side at bay for a lot of the match. If not for one scrappy bouncing ball chance that Hughes finished well or Reid deciding not to pass the ball to his own teammate then Watford wouldn’t have fashioned any real chances of their own. It’s a fine line and when it comes to it Moyes has been unlucky. He will hope that his luck turns against Everton in midweek and the Hammers continue to progress.