West Ham United manager David Moyes has a huge problem on his hands, after today’s painful 5-0 defeat to Fulham at Craven Cottage.
Fulham put West Ham to the sword in the Premier League this afternoon, and it really was a shambolic display from every Hammers player selected by David Moyes.
The Scot made two changes from the team that beat Tottenham with Aaron Cresswell and Pablo Fornals coming into the side in place of Emerson Palmieri and Edson Alvarez.
Both players who came into the team were hooked at half-time though, and that tells us all we need to know really doesn’t it.
I’m not denying the fact that they were both absolutely dreadful, because they really were shocking this afternoon.
The Hammers second string players just haven’t been good enough this season, and they weren’t last term either in all fairness.
In my opinion, though, Moyes has to take a lot of the blame for that…
David Moyes has a huge issue at West Ham, and it’s self inflicted
The Scot has a really bad habit of ostracising his players who are not regular starters.
Let’s go through the list shall we. Pablo Fornals, Maxwel Cornet, Said Benrahma, Thilo Kehrer and Flynn Downes last season.
All of them have been pushed to one side by Moyes at different stages over the past 18 months. The Scot doesn’t give his fringe players substantial minutes for months on end. He plays his favoured starting XI until one of them breaks or are forced to miss out through suspension.
Because of this, whenever Moyes is forced to use any of his backup options, they are so rusty when they come into the side, and end up looking like poor players.
They have zero motivation, and quite clearly don’t feel involved in the first-team.
Take four of the five players mentioned above for instance, not including Downes because he is currently out on loan. Benrahma has been given 940 minutes in all competitions this season whilst Fornals, Kehrer and Cornet have 516, 371, 117 to their names respectively (Transfermarkt).
That’s the equivalent of just 21 full games all season long between the four of them. If David Moyes wants to start getting the best out of his fringe players, he needs to give them all more minutes earlier on in the season so that when they do come into the side, they at least have a bit of rhythm.
The likes of Fornals and Benrahma come into the team, perform terribly, and are then dropped again. It happens all the time, and is something that Moyes needs to address.
There is an argument to be made that some of the second string just aren’t good enough, and that may well be true in some cases. However, Moyes has brought on this problem himself as far as I’m concerned, and now it’s a vicious cycle that will be hard to get out of.
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