For West Ham, the loss to Crystal Palace was only their second loss of the EPL season. Up until this match the Hammers have been fairly clinical, but on Saturday that same ability wasn’t there.
Throughout the past 8 match weeks for West Ham, they have been, for West Ham standards, really clinical. Which of course is a credit to one, Pellegrini and two, the players learning the system and growing with the games.
The Hammers have averaged around 11 shots a game with about 5 of those shots being on target. Not great, but still about half of the time they have made the opposing keeper work a bit. On Saturday it was close to the same with 9 total shots and 4 on target. However, the 5 that weren’t on target is where the story begins.
Out of 5 missed shots, it was only 3 that really would’ve changed the outcome of the match. Anderson’s slingshot, Lanzini’s curl that didn’t curl, and Ogbonna’s moon shot all came in a location where if just finished, probably would’ve resulted in a goal.
For Anderson and Lanzini, they have been pretty on point with shot selection and ball movement this season which made these poor finishes even more appalling. Granted, Anderson’s came with the most degree of difficulty of these three missed chances but on this day, it just wasn’t meant to be.
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Oggy’s miss came to him as a surprise to everyone in the stadium to include him. Not very often does a center back find the ball placed right back to him in the box with the keeper completely on his heels. However, Oggy is not known for his feet and it showed.
With historically low, for this season, finishing for the Hammers, it also didn’t help that the Crystal Palace keeper was on fire. All four of Guaita’s saves were perfectly taken and he was literally in the right place at the right time.
What made that even worse was that he was doing it looking like a flashback of Chicharito with the bleach blonde hair. Additionally, it would be way too easy to just blame the loss on the poor finishes, but looking back it was much more than that.
That, however, is a story for another day as one can only take so much heartbreak in one article. It is safe to say that Pellegrini’s men have a lot of work to do over this break to get back to the basics and back on track.