West Ham London - 1 Aston Villa - 1 The Post Match Thread.

[olaftab]

He's from Coventry as well, I'm not sure we'd be to too high up his list of favourite clubs.

Oh he'll be fine. Having worked  and known lot of friends from Cov they know their place in the food chain. Maddison will be delighted to play for us and we have had one or two decent signing from City in the past.

[PaulWinch again]

I think the whole Leicester squad have been disappointing, but I'd trust Emery to get them playing at potential.

Of the players mentioned, Barnes is the one who'd probably get a start, Tielenans would be good for squad depth and Maddison would be up against some decent players to play, but he'd be a great option I think.

Pereira is a cracking right back, injuries are his problem though.

[Smithy]

Yep, anyone sniffing at Maddison needs to give their head a wobble. Yes, he's "not as good as Jack was", but he's still very good indeed.  I suspect he'll be off in the summer anyway, Newcastle probably. Possibly Arsenal.

There are easily four or five players across the Leicester and West Ham squads who are good enough to play for teams in Europe, and if they're available, I hope we are interested.

[Clark W Griswold]

Isn't he meant to be a bit 'difficult' though? If that's the case we should steer clear we've had too many of those over the years. If not and we can get him then sure.

[rob_bridge]

The time to sign Maddison was the summer Grealish left.  Maybe we tried, he said no and we entered into the '3 players replacing one' nonsense.  Actually, the more I think about that the more laughable it is.  Barnes has been good when I've seen him (v us).  Not sure about Tielemans.  I'd expect that Leicester squad looking a bit different next season.  Same with the West Ham squad.           

I thought Barnes was player we should have signed when Grealish left. We would have massively overpaid though and no guarantee he would have come as they were 2 x 5th places and FA Cup winners.

[KevinGage]

Read this morning that all West Ham players have a relegation clause in their contracts and wages reduced significantly if they go to the Championship. Same applies to more recently acquired Leicester players.

Could be worth sniffing around.

I'd hope we were generally aiming higher than that.

The only two I'd consider from West Ham are Rice and Bowen.
I'm struggling to think of one from Leicester, I'm not convinced by Barnes.

Aside from Tielemans and Maddison - who will realistically attract top 4-6 bids - the Belgian centre half they signed to replace Fofana (Faes?) has looked decent when I've seen them this season. Soyuncu looked a step up from Maguire for the first few years he was there, not sure what's happened recently.

Nididi and James Justin would be decent squad options. And Iheanacho has a better than average goalscoring record at VP.

[Risso]

Isn't he meant to be a bit 'difficult' though? If that's the case we should steer clear we've had too many of those over the years. If not and we can get him then sure.

Other than the time he was said to have gone to a casino when meant to be too injured for England duty, haven't heard much about him being a problem. Whenever he's been interviewed I've always been impressed at how articulate and thoughtful he sounds to be honest.

[Brend'Watkins]

I haven't seen much mention of it but wasn't Ings monumentally useless against us?  All capped by being bullied in the box by the diminutive figure of Bundia at corners, how much has Antonio's form dipped if he's preferred?

[LeeB]

I haven't seen much mention of it but wasn't Ings monumentally useless against us?  All capped by being bullied in the box by the diminutive figure of Bundia at corners, how much has Antonio's form dipped if he's preferred?

Yes, and Tony Gale blathering on about our high line when the reason for this was because Ings can't run and we know it best.

[Villa in Denmark]

According the commentator over here Antonio was injured.

[Brend'Watkins]

According the commentator over here Antonio was injured.

Must be West Ham's version of our two keepers on the bench.

[ChicagoLion]

Isn't he meant to be a bit 'difficult' though? If that's the case we should steer clear we've had too many of those over the years. If not and we can get him then sure.

Other than the time he was said to have gone to a casino when meant to be too injured for England duty, haven't heard much about him being a problem. Whenever he's been interviewed I've always been impressed at how articulate and thoughtful he sounds to be honest.

My biggest concern is his recent injury record.

[Pat McMahon]

Same with Soucek, a couple of years ago he looked to be the complete midfielder. Now he just looks completely crap.

Or was he just a Fellaini lite in that his goals were masking very average midfield play. Rice has his head up his ass about his next move I'd suggest.

Yes I think it's a bit of this. Soucek is great at running around a lot, making tackles and them bombing up the pitch to get onto the end of crosses. His engine is great, and coupled with Rice it made us very combative. However he doesn't offer a lot else. He doesn't have much skill and his passing is poor. Rice seemed to think he could be an all round box to box, Gerrard type midfielder, so for a while it was Soucek holding back more whilst Rice went forward, which didn't work. To be fair, Soucek has been mostly better of late, but the midfield three of him, Rice and Paqueta doesn't really work because they don't really compliment each other, and all three want to play deep too much.

Plus Rice seems to have got ahead of himself and seems to be looking elsewhere.

I was listening to an overseas journalist on 5 Live a few weeks ago , possibly Julien Laurent or Guillem Balague, who reckoned that Liverpool and West Ham are struggling with the sheer volume of games they have played in the past 18 months. Two consecutive seasons in the Europa League with a manager who likes to use the same core group of players must have some impact on consistency.