Arnautovic rescues West Ham with quickfire double against Brighton
West Ham came away from last night’s match with a 2-2 draw. But if they’d kicked into action before they went 2-0 down it could have been a very different story.
West Ham will always find a way to surprise. Whether it’s fighting hard against the big teams in the league or struggling to create against teams they should be beating, you can safely say that watching this side you have no idea what’s going to happen. So the fact we took an hour to do anything of note last night wasn’t overly new. But it’s damn infuriating.
I will get the excuses out of the way now. We know the team is tired, they’ve had a lot of matches. But so have other team. Other teams may have fewer injuries than us yes, but here we had the better team on paper and for an hour we looked devoid of ideas. But that doesn’t excuse why Carroll was poor, Lucas had the first touch of Lukaku and our wingers were just not involved.
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Whilst watching the first half there was a distinct lack of movement off of the ball, and consequently the passing was horrendous. There was little to no adventure, or even a speculative long ball to try and hit the head of Andy Carroll. If you’re going to start a man who is known for his headers, at least try and hit him.
We didn’t defend poorly overall, but the organisation from set pieces was poor. From the first corner it was clear what the plan was and we just couldn’t do it. We were warned time and time again so when the two goals from corners came it wasn’t a surprise. But it did trigger a response at least, and when we’re taking about this club that hasn’t always been the case. Pellegrini made some attacking changes and the side did improve, although it was just too late.
The big plus from the match is definitely Arnautovic’s two goals. He is a top striker when he has confidence and hopefully the injury layoff has him fully recovered now. If he is back and firing then the match against Arsenal could be an interesting one indeed. However in order to get anything from that, our first half will need to show a lot more intensity than we saw here.