David Moyes has called for his West Ham players to do something they’ve proved ridiculously bad at over the last year.
West Ham take on Bournemouth at the London Stadium on Monday night with their season at something of a crossroads.
The weekend’s results have seen West Ham drop right down to 17th place in the Premier League table.
But beat Bournemouth and the Hammers will jump up seven places to 10th – within striking distance of the European places.
West Ham fans were grateful for a recent mini-revival which saw them beat Wolves and Fulham and draw at Southampton.
Those being brutally honest, though, will concede that the wins over Wolves and Fulham – even their first win of the season against Aston Villa – had a touch of fortune about them.
In other games, though, fortune has most definitely been hiding so – as they say – it seems these things even themselves out.
But that is something West Ham can’t seem to do.
West Ham fans have found themselves asking the questions ‘when was the last time we played well for an entire 90 minutes’.
David Moyes calls for West Ham players to do something they’ve proved ridiculously bad at over the last year
Given West Ham’s form fell off a cliff after a win over Liverpool last November, it is fair to say not very often at all.
In fact that Liverpool game, European matches at home against Sevilla and away at Lyon as well as barely credible thrashing of relegation fodder Norwich are possibly the only matches where West Ham have played well for the course of an entire 90 minute match.
Four or five games where the team has played well for the entire 90 minutes, in 11 months, is laughably bad for a side with designs to challenge the so-called elite.
Hammers fans aren’t alone in asking the question, though, because the manager has been asking the same thing himself ahead of a crunch game against Bournemouth.
David Moyes has called for his West Ham players to do something they’ve proved ridiculously bad at over the last year – play well for 90 minutes.
Speaking in his pre-match presser, Moyes has made it clear he is well aware performances have been far too bitty and inconsistent.
And he wants his West Ham players to start putting together their best stuff for the duration of a match instead of fits and starts.
“I feel as if we’ve had some jagged edges at times, sometimes it’s been defensively, sometimes it’s been attacking, sometimes we’ve maybe not done so well on set pieces or there has just been a bit of a jagged edge on something, whatever we’ve done this season,” Moyes said (Football.London).
“Just not quite as smooth as we’ve been, but I think there’s bits of it where I thought this is good. I thought the football we played against Southampton at times was very good. I thought again, the other night (against Liverpool), we played some really good stuff.
“There’s been parts of the games where we’ve had to suffer, we’ve not played quite as well for the whole 90 minutes and we’ve got to find a way of not conceding a goal in that time and get through that rocky patch, whether it be the first half or whether it be in the second half, whenever it may be, I think we’ll be okay. We’ve tended to not be able to sustain it for maybe the whole 90 minutes at the moment.”
Moyes may be referring to this season, but this is an issue that stretches way back into the middle of last term make no mistake about that.
And West Ham must do something about it if they truly have ambitions to continue to challenge for the top six, starting against Bournemouth.
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