Coufal speaks on West Ham's tactics against Manchester City
After the 3-1 defeat against Manchester City, manager Julen Lopetegui expressed the need to bring in an another central defender to improve the squad depth in the defence. While Manchester City are the defending Champions of the Premier League, the Hammers could have taken a draw from this match with an improved performance. In the defence, Jean-Clair Todibo has recently arrived and needs time to adapt to the Premier League, therefore Konstantinos Mavropanos again started as the centre back alongside Max Kilman.
However, manager Julen Lopetegui's positional tactics were highly surprising with almost all West Ham players playing through the right flank and the middle in the first half. On the left were Emerson Palmieri and new signing Max Kilman, who has had a great start to this season in the Premier League. However, Palmieri often advanced forward down the left flank to create chances for the front three, which left a lot of space on the left side of the pitch.
Coufal speaks on West Ham's tactics against Manchester City
Pep Guardiola's side took advantage of that and often made quick runs through the left and the middle as Bernardo Silva and Jeremy Doku created several goal scoring chances inside the box. The first two goals for City came with their brilliant passing through the left flank and star forward Erling Haaland scored the goals. Although manager Julen Lopetegui changed this tactical setup in the second half, Manchester City had taken the lead already and scored again in the second half to win the match.
Speaking about their first half performance, experienced right back Vladimir Coufal who came as a second half substitute, said,
"Man City had a lot of chances in the first half, and it didn’t work out quite well to be honest, but we changed something for the second half, and I think it was much better as we had a lot more possession, created some chances, and also hit the post"
- Vladimir Coufal
Next. Edson Alvarez stays with the West Ham squad during the international break. Edson Alvarez stays with the West Ham squad during the international break. dark
West Ham are still adapting to the new style of football under manager Julen Lopetegui and will try to further improve their overall performance after the international break.
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