I am writing this post because of what we learnt of Jussi in last night’s game. When he first arrived at West Ham there were many questions surrounding him, such as why he had been Bolton’s number two. I myself am not a big admirer of Jussi and I get nervous when ever the ball is near our box. I think that last night proved why he was number 2.
Yesterday Jussi was struggling even against bottom of the league QPR, even though there were a few fine saves in the game there were also some lucky escapes. At one point in the game there was a cross floated into the box and was coming straight at him, and instead of catching it comfortably he flapped at it with the ball going all but a few yards. Luckily though there was a defender there to clear away the danger. I picked out this save in particular because he was unmarked and he could have easily caught it.
This brings me onto my next point which is his inability to catch a ball. I don’t know about you but I always seem to see that Jussi doesn’t like to catch a ball always prefering to parry it or punch it away. This is a very risky thing to do as it doesn’t relieve the pressure but puts us under it again. Now this is all fair under weaker teams who don’t follow the ball up as much as bigger teams, but when it does come to the stronger teams we will end up conceding goals almost every time they get forward. This will possibly become evident when we face Arsenal on Saturday who are just starting to hit form and conceding goals is something we don’t want to do with our inability to score them.
However don’t view this article as me having a go at Jussi as he made some great save during the game last night, possibly even saving us at times which he has done on a few occasions this season. This article is just me picking up on some of the aspects in his game that could need a few touch ups. So do I think that we can rely on Jussi, well yes and no. I say yes because he is capable of doing well in the weaker games of this season, i.e QPR. However I say no because I think he will struggle against the bigger teams with their higher calibre of players.