Why West Ham Are So Much Better In Europe This Season

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West Ham have one foot in the final of the Europa Conference League but, with just a few games to go, still aren't quite safe from Premier League relegation.

Transcript

00:00 West Ham United have got one foot in the final of the Conference League.

00:06 That's good.

00:07 However, with just a few games to play, they are still not completely safe in the battle

00:10 to avoid Premier League relegation.

00:12 That's bad.

00:13 Hello there everybody, Adam Cleary from 442 here, and quite the conundrum, isn't it, West

00:18 Ham United fans?

00:19 How can a team be so consistently good in Europe and still so consistently bad to average

00:26 in the Premier League?

00:27 What a little puzzle that is.

00:29 And to decipher it, we must first decipher the man that is David Boyes.

00:34 Right, so to make sense of their problems in the present, let us take a journey through

00:41 time and space to last season.

00:46 This is the West Ham United side that got all the way to the semi-finals of the Europa

00:50 League and didn't even allow the disruption of European football to dent them too bad

00:54 domestically and qualified for Europe all over again via their league position.

00:58 They were dead, dead, dead, dead, dead good, and crucially, they did not lose a single

01:02 one of their most important players.

01:04 Fabianski, Cresswell, Zouma, Socek, Rice, Bowen, Antonio, all the major players that

01:09 brought them success last year are still there this year, so you would assume that success

01:13 would just carry on and only drop a little, little bit, not plunge all the way to the

01:17 bottom part of the table.

01:19 But the thing is, while this has stayed the same, the main thing that has changed is David

01:24 Boyes in his brain.

01:26 See, the only thing in football that David Boyes thinks is more important than just wearing

01:31 a comfortable track suit is consistency.

01:35 And the reason this team was so good last year was because it was so consistent.

01:38 Yes, they did once or twice go to a back three and there were a few injuries that required

01:42 changes here and there, but by and large, pretty much every single week, West Ham United

01:46 rocked up in a really well drilled 4-2-3-1, everybody knew their jobs, and it just worked.

01:51 But then what happened was David Boyes sat down in the summer and he thought, "You know

01:54 what it is, I've got a really good team, I'm going to make them a really great team."

01:59 And West Ham United went out and they spent the money required to become a really great

02:03 team.

02:04 They beat off a whole host of clubs to sign Gianluca Scamacca from Sassuolo as he was

02:07 probably the most sought after young centre forward in Europe.

02:10 Neha Fagerd arrived from Rennes, Maxwell Corne looked to star in the relegated Burnley side,

02:14 but the most important signing in Boyes' head was this man, Lucas Paqueta.

02:19 Oh, and if you're sitting there going, "Adam, it's actually Paquetar," then I don't

02:23 know if it is.

02:24 I've heard both, and Paqueta sounds better, so I'm going with that.

02:27 This was the man that David Boyes believed was going to take them from a good team to

02:31 a great team.

02:32 He would just fit right into this number 10 position in their existing 4-2-3-1 and he

02:36 would make every single player around him much better.

02:39 He'd be able to drop in with the two sitting players to allow for a complete overload in

02:43 the centre midfield, but also win the ball much higher up for them, allowing them to

02:47 play slightly further forward.

02:48 He'd link up really well with both wide players, dropping into the flanks, either

02:52 putting them in behind or allowing them to play 1-2 so they can get into the box.

02:56 Most importantly, he would float around the centre forward, whether that was Antonio or

02:59 Skamake, and create loads and loads of chances for them.

03:03 While, in my opinion, Paqueta has proved he's an incredibly talented player, what he's

03:07 not been is that exact player.

03:09 If he has been, he's not been in that exact system.

03:12 Thus, the problem West Ham have had this season is that David Boyes has sacrificed the consistency

03:16 that made them such a dangerous side in favour of trying as many different things out as

03:21 he possibly can to try and make it click with Paqueta.

03:24 Where last season they virtually never deviated from the 4-2-3-1 unless they absolutely had

03:29 to, this season has seen a bit of everything, and none of it's really worked.

03:34 After a bad run at the start of the season, Boyes decided to instead shift to a back three,

03:39 sacrificed his number 10 to allow them to have wing backs, and went to a 5-4-1.

03:42 Now this did get them a 1-0 win at Aston Villa, but the very next game against Chelsea he

03:46 decides to try and introduce Paqueta and messes with it again.

03:49 This time he sacrifices Cresswell for a holding midfielder, allows everybody else to push

03:53 slightly further up, and brings in Paqueta alongside Declan Rice to get a 4-3-3.

03:57 By October he decides to try several ideas at once.

04:00 He retains the back three but has basically two wing backs alongside a double pivot of

04:05 Rice and Socek, and this time Paqueta plays his number 10 behind two centre forwards,

04:09 including Bowen, tucked right in from the right hand side.

04:12 A 3-4-1-2.

04:13 They get a draw with it at Southampton.

04:15 Now after this he reverts back to the 4-2-3-1, and West Ham then go on to lose, I think I'm

04:20 right in saying six of the next seven games, before rocking up at Brentford and trying

04:24 something else.

04:25 This time he sticks with the three at the back and the two wing backs deployed alongside

04:28 the holding midfielders, this time Paqueta replaces Socek alongside Rice, and instead

04:32 of the 1-2 up front, he instead goes with a 2-1, Bowen and Benrama playing off Skamaka

04:38 to ideally provide all kinds of movement.

04:40 They are beaten 2-0 at home and within a week are in the relegation zone.

04:44 And from there it has continued, they've gone back and forward between all these different

04:47 formations across the season.

04:48 He even played a flat 4-4-2 at one point, trying to get Danny Ings with Antonio at the

04:53 very top of the pitch, and just nothing quite works for more than a game or two.

04:57 And this isn't me saying, by the way, that Lucas Paqueta is the problem, even if he is

05:01 how you talk about the problem.

05:02 He's like having a massive wart on your face.

05:05 Obviously everybody goes, "Oh my God, you've got a wart on your face."

05:08 But your problem is not the wart on your face, your problem is that you keep kissing frogs,

05:12 which is, I think, how you get them.

05:13 The problem is that David Moyes had a very good team that was very well drilled and who

05:17 could, on their day, if they were at it, beat anybody they came across.

05:21 But what he wanted to do was to add quality to this that would fit in seamlessly and would

05:26 mean that even if they weren't at it, even if they dropped off their levels, they still

05:30 have enough talent on the pitch to go and get a result, which is genuinely what takes

05:34 it from being like 7th or 8th in the league to 3rd or 4th.

05:37 Whether it's been Skamaka or it's been Paqueta or it's been one of the others, he hasn't

05:40 quite been able to make one of these better players fit into the team and in trying to

05:45 do so, he's completely disrupted the rhythm of everybody else.

05:49 And there are some other issues, like they do create a lot of chances and they don't

05:51 score them, like they're massively underperforming their xG, if you care about xG, and they're

05:55 also the lowest in the league in terms of shot on target percentage, if that makes sense.

06:01 Like the amount of shots they get, they have the fewest number of them actually on target,

06:04 so they are quite wasteful in front of goal.

06:06 And they also do defend pretty well relative to the teams around them.

06:09 Like they've definitely got the best defence out of that whole relegation threatened part

06:12 of the league.

06:13 And I think I'm right in saying they've only conceded like 5 goals more than Brighton have

06:17 all season, so there's still a good team in here.

06:20 So to answer my original question of why they're so consistently good in Europe and so consistently

06:25 meh in the Premier League, it's because, well, you get punished every single week for being

06:30 meh in the Premier League.

06:32 Whereas in the Conference League, teams will make changes, teams will rotate, nobody else

06:36 is really fully at it, so you can get away with not being at it as well.

06:40 Like the quality of your players will then see you through, certainly more than they

06:44 will in the Premier League.

06:46 Which is of course ironic, because that's what they were supposed to do in the Premier

06:48 League this season.

06:50 They were supposed to get by on the quality of their squad.

06:52 Now if you're a West Ham United fan, I'm sure you're going to tell me a bajillion other

06:56 reasons why they're in the position they're in.

06:58 And yeah, fine, awesome, get it in the comments below.

07:01 And everybody else, get in there as well.

07:03 It's a party, but only if you make it one.

07:04 In the meantime though, thank you so much for watching, this is 442, we do these kind

07:08 of videos all the time and we'd dearly love to have you for some more, so please hit the

07:11 subscribe button.

07:12 We do all the clubs, all the clubs, not just like three of them.

07:15 In the meantime though, thank you so much for watching, I've of course been Adam Cleary,

07:19 irons, etc. and I'll see you soon.

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