David Moyes needs to become proactive at West Ham

West Ham are sitting on zero points so far in the Premier League. Whilst it’s not a fatal position at the moment, David Moyes must be willing to tinker to ensure we’re not stranded by the time we get our first points.

If, before the season had started, you had told West Ham fans that the team would be on zero points after 2 games, I don’t think many would be surprised. Newcastle are hardly a walkover, and Arsenal wants European football. But there is a fair amount of frustration in the fanbase at the decisions Moyes made.

System fault against Newcastle

For the opening day of the season, Moyes went with a tried and trusted 4-2-3-1 formation, putting Noble at the No.10 spot. With this side having done more than enough to stay up post-restart, you can understand his confidence and trust. However, Steve Bruce however won the tactical opening gambit by playing a compact 4-4-2 that looked to find Andy Carroll or Callum Wilson as soon as possible.

For the first half, West Ham struggled to create any genuine openings, hitting the bar twice from half-chances from Tomas Soucek and Angelo Ogbonna whilst Mark Noble found himself repeatedly coming deep to collect the ball, isolating Antonio. Newcastle was able to exploit space behind the fullbacks and in turn, find space in and around the penalty area, and probably should have gone into the half time break up. But, at 0-0 after 45 minutes, Moyes was given a chance to address things and get them back on track. But he didn’t.

So when we were exposed down our left-hand side for a ball to make its way to Callum Wilson to score, it wasn’t really a surprise to anyone watching. Ten minutes after that, we make a double substitution bringing Noble and Pablo Fornals off and throwing Sebastien Haller and Andriy Yarmolenko on as we tried to shift the focus forward. But the damage was done. Newcastle was sitting back and protecting the lead they had earned. It was going to take something special at that point, and the Hammers really weren’t in the kind of form to be able to do that. Your job as a manager is to try and provide a system that allows players their best opportunity. Not just hope they get a result.

Missed Opportunity at Arsenal

Most West Ham fans were not too excited about the chance of us taking any points against Arsenal, however, the plan by Moyes seemed to work. Slightly more defensive than the matchup against Newcastle, for the most part, the three centrebacks and two wingback system kept the Arsenal attackers at bay. Here when we went into the break level, I thought we were good value, and the system was working. So no issue there.

But then as we begin to press the issue and chances pop up, there are no worries. But then players start to look a bit leggy. Fornals is struggling on the left-wing, Michail Antonio is struggling to get shots away in this static striker role. But no changes come. Arteta begins making changes, trying to exploit the gap in behind our wing-backs, but we continue to make changes but spurn them. Felipe Anderson and Sebastien Haller sitting on the bench, looking on.

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Not until the 83rd minute does Moyes make a change. 83rd. And when he does, he takes off Jarrod Bowen, who had done a lot of running (but was still looking OK defensively and dangerous in attack in my opinion) and brings on Yarmolenko. Two minutes later, and Arsenal are in behind Yarmolenko to set up the winner. Then with less than five minutes to go, he brings on the two most expensive attacking signings we’ve ever made and seems annoyed that we can’t breakthrough. If they did get the goal it would have been luck.

There just seems to be no intent from the manager to influence the game positively with substitutions other than just subbing good players on late into the match and hoping they do something.

I’m not saying that Anderson or Haller coming on earlier wins us the match, but I do think it gives us that chance. If you just sit there and wait for the better quality players will usually win, and Arsenal still has that edge over us. With player fitness currently a strange unknown with the short offseason, international break and games coming thick and fast, leaving subs that late seems odd anyway. But it needs to change if Moyes wants this season to be anything other than a relegation dog fight.

I understand making changes to a side all playing well is unlikely to help. But when was the last time we could genuinely say all of the XI were playing well enough to not be considered subbable? Especially with potentially the strongest bench in our history…