West Ham v Aston Villa Post-Match Thread

[The Left Side]

Room for improvement

[supertom]

Darren Bent isn't a skipper for me. We need someone in midfield who's going to kick a few arses.
Plus where's the urgency? Sometimes I wished we'd just bung it forward. We wasted our set pieces too much too. Then again, the delivery was piss poor when we actually did play it in the box.

Hate saying it too. We actually could have done with Heskey today. There, I said it. (Dons helmet, ducks for cover).

[Shrek]

Well that was like playing with 10 men. We cannot accommodate Bent IMO.

[barrysleftfoot]

  Hmmmmmm.

 Thought we would struggle at free kicks and corners, and so it proved.After an impressive 25 mins, we lost control of the game, lost a goal, and then never really looked like getting back into the game.

 For me, Clark, GG and Bannan are going to struggle at this level, as is Lowton.Baker is not a LB, and he needs to get a midfielder to support Bent better.KLM started well, but faded greatly, Delph i thought showed enough today, what we wanted was a good winger to beat players wide, but N'Zog was playing behind Bent instead of playing wide.

  Lowton sums up Villa to me.Hes ok, but not good enough quality at this level.

[citizenDJ]

Actually, although I don't know what role he plays in the dressing room and so on, I'm really not sure that Bent would be my choice as Captain, either.

[Steve R]

Allardyce is all about stopping the opposition and finding a (usually shite) goal from somewhere. It worked for him today. That's hardly a first, especially against us.

I am not overly downhearted. August to mid September is always silly season for results and performances.

I wouldn't agree that it's just more of the same old. The intent to play is there, we need to work on execution. It is going to take time.

Today should have been abut letting West Ham work at stopping us play, and clean up when the gaps appear late in the game. Conceding just before half time was the last thing we wanted.

[Brend'Watkins]

It's going to take time for Lambert's plan to start showing some return but saying that a sense of urgency doesn't need any planning.  That was totally lacking today. 

I thought Vlaar looked composed 2nd half.

[Apyadg]

Plus where's the urgency?

Especially in the last few minutes. That free kick in stoppage time, we had nothing to lose, and didn't even get it in to the box. It was like they were settling for a 1-0 loss.

[Monty]

Darren Bent isn't a skipper for me. We need someone in midfield who's going to kick a few arses.
Plus where's the urgency? Sometimes I wished we'd just bung it forward. We wasted our set pieces too much too. Then again, the delivery was piss poor when we actually did play it in the box.

Hate saying it too. We actually could have done with Heskey today. There, I said it. (Dons helmet, ducks for cover).

Look, this is a totally reactionary post. 'Just bung[ing] it forward' to Heskey is all we did last season. It hasn't clicked yet, but Lambert himself said yesterday it'll need time. The signs of improvement are there - we just need to be a little more patient.

[Whiney MacWhineface]

For me, the main reason we created nothing today was that Delph and KEA were doing their job in midfield, but Holman (who I thought did absolutely nothing and looked lost) and N'Zogbia offered nothing to us going forward.

We had Ireland (who worked hard) trying to thread almost impossible balls through to Bent...and that seemed to be it.

What concerned me most was that there seemed to be no Plan B when that clearly wasn't working. I guess the ineffectual nature of N'Zogbisa and Holman limited the Plan Bness, bur even so that was disappointing.

Defence looked OK, the centre of midfield was OK, and erm, um...

[The Situation]

Slightly disappointed and annoyed. No attacking threat going forward. No penetration with the ball. Didn't create chances in front of goal. The front line isolated with the supporting cast not providing or even at least being made available to get into good positions. We looked like we lacked togetherness not knowing what we should be doing as a team. Silly fouls given away. Looked too relaxed out there not playing like this is the opening game of the season. A lackluster performance against a team who are promoted and didn't look anything special out there but it just looked easy for them because we looked so poor, our own downfalls in the game is why we lost, we created our own problems in this game and we didn't know how to adapt or change. After 20 minutes in the first half we just shut off. Not encouraging to see your team start the season like that.

Blurgh.

One positive however, although it doesn't mean much when you've lost... passing retention and possession has already improved in just one game. Just look at the stats. Its only one game I know but it seems like Lambert wants us to pass the ball better and play the possession game - its encouraging if he wants us to play in that particular way but what we do with the ball needs to count... possession doesn't win you football games.

[Ron Manager]

Give them five games and if its still as bad as that second half today we really will have problems.

[The Situation]

Bit of an anti-climax, still could be worse.  Could be liverpool, QPR, or Norwich.

Agreed.

Its still the first game of the season, heres hoping we can improve and also make so signings that our going to benefit this team because we do still need to make a couple more obvious signings.

Just got to think positive, put this game behind us and move on.

[gervilla]

What a let down that was.
Time to spend,spend,spend Mr Lerner. I really couldn't hack another season like the last two.

[brian green]

I never expected any other result today.   I did not expect to see us play particularly well today.   Far too much damage has been done by the triple whammy of the manner of O'Neill's departure and the horrendous follow up to that blow by the appointment of a sick man and an incompetent man in quick succession.   The team has to be rebuilt from the bottom up.   Lambert is no miracle worker but at least he knows what he wants.   If the players we have cannot deliver what he wants and what we want they have to be shipped out and replaced by players who can whether it is Darren Bent or Gary Gardner, Stephen Ireland or Charles N'Zogbia.   The game today showed us where we are and the magnitude of the task ahead.

We have a manager who can turn things around but he must have the financila backing of the owner.