The West Ham United supporters who walked out in their thousands with an hour played and Chelsea 5-1 up at the London Stadium do not need Rob Green to tell them that events on the pitch are not exactly going to plan.
Green watched on in horror as Mads Hermansen’s nightmare start to Hammers life continued.
While a fully paid-up member of the proverbial ‘goalkeepers union’, Green accepts that the Dane has not covered himself in glory even if he feels that Hermansen was ‘unfairly’ thrown in at the deep end by Graham Potter.
In front of him, Jean-Clair Todibo, Max Kilman and Nayef Aguerd hardly fared much better. Up north, the Manchester United supporters witnessed a very familiar sight down the right-hand flank too. Aaron Wan-Bissaka falling asleep at the back stick – as he did for Chelsea’s first three goals – was a problem which continually plagued ‘AWB’ at Old Trafford too.
Green though feels that West Ham’s business off the pitch is just as concerning. Would the Hammers have collapsed so dramatically with Vladimir Coufal, Lukasz Fabianski, Michail Antonio, Aaron Cresswell and Danny Ings on the pitch?
Rob Green thinks West Ham United will regret letting Michail Antonio and co leave
Well, maybe.
The former claret and blue quintet suffered their fair share of drubbings too. But Green argues that West Ham’s seemingly feeble mentality can at least partly be explained by a lack of leaders on the pitch or in the dressing room.
Perhaps the biggest concern of all, though, is that this was always the plan.
Hammers News were informed, when a whole host of veteran campaigners saw their contracts expire, that West Ham wanted to ‘reinvent’ Graham Potter’s squad with a focus on reducing the average age of his roster.
Yet, in doing so, they moved on from five players who had amassed over 1,000 appearances for West Ham in a combined 35 years of service.
And that is without mentioning Kurt Zouma, the former captain who also departed on a free after a loan spell in Qatar
“I look off the pitch as well as on it,” a worried Green sighed as the full time whistle echoed around a stadium pretty much empty by the 90th minute. “And you look at the guys who have walked away from here. Danny Ings Coufal, Fabianski, Antonio…
“Guys who weren’t going to play every week but they were part of a successful team here and they were part of what made the dressing room tick, and you need that.
“Right now, you’re looking around and going, ‘[Apart from] Jarrod Bowen, where are the leaders?
“You’re looking around the game, you’re looking around the dressing room, and it feels like there’s not that drive there. And it’s a horrible thing to say. It’s a horrible thing to say about a dressing room. [But] you just don’t feel like there’s there’s the nastiness in there to turn it around.”
Green backs Mads Hermansen to recover at West Ham
Bowen, the man currently wearing the armband, was just about the only player who looked determined to make something, anything happen as Chelsea cruised to what is almost certain to be their easiest of the entire campaign.
That we can make such an assumption, on matchday two, speaks volumes.
Green, who played in goal for the Hammers between 2006 and 2012, is pleading patience with Mads Hermansen meanwhile.
He points out that the £18 million signing was chucked in to make his debut against Sunderland just days after joining, and without the benefits of a full pre-season due to his recent injury issues.
“Not to deflect away from the goalkeeper situation [but] you’re coming up against Chelsea, get the basics right! They’ve conceded three from set-pieces, two from how the crosses came in last week [on Wearside]. At the moment, the goalkeeper is in with [those overall problems] defensively,” Green adds.
“He played one game in pre-season, Hermansen. He hasn’t played since April [due to injury]. He’s been thrown in and its a lot to ask of him.”
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