West Ham Utd 0 Chelsea 4 (01/03/08)

Relive every moment of every first team game since the beginning of the 2005/06 season. Our archive of matchday threads originally posted in the General Discussion Forum.

Moderator: Gnome

Post Reply
Scaloni Is The Messiah
Posts: 9296
Joined: Mon Sep 04, 2006 1:44 pm

Re: West Ham Utd v Chelsea: match thread

Post by Scaloni Is The Messiah »

bonehead wrote: presumably it overlooked the perfectly good, but disallowed, goal they scored after about 90 seconds?

we were giving them too much space right from the off. everybody around me at the game was saying similar. at the time, not in hindsight.

what's football first? (serious question.....I'm not being facetious)
Sky's highlights thing. You can choose which game you want to watch and you see 60-odd minutes of the game, so everything's pretty well-covered. And fair enough, that was a goal. But Cole had three half-chances created in the next ten minutes. It was looking fairly even to me until the three goals (sounds ridiculous, but I think there's a point there).
User avatar
bonehead
Posts: 15266
Joined: Thu Dec 05, 2002 10:05 am
Location: Finchampstead

Re: West Ham Utd v Chelsea: match thread

Post by bonehead »

oh right cheers......I thought it must be something to do with sky but I don't have it myself........I can use that as an excuse to be able to go down the pub when there is a live game I want to watch

I thought we were doing OK up front for a spell in the first half.........I dare to say (despite the fact I think player comparisons don't really stand for much) that faubert reminded me a little of sinclair a couple of times.......maybe it's because he looks not too disimilar build wise

but apart from that, I still maintain we were giving them far too much space right from the off.......and except for 2 or 3 of our players, just looked generally so much slower
User avatar
NE hammer
Posts: 1720
Joined: Thu Apr 29, 2004 2:51 pm
Location: The Frozen North

Re: West Ham Utd v Chelsea: match thread

Post by NE hammer »

bonehead wrote:oh right cheers......I thought it must be something to do with sky but I don't have it myself........I can use that as an excuse to be able to go down the pub when there is a live game I want to watch

I thought we were doing OK up front for a spell in the first half.........I dare to say (despite the fact I think player comparisons don't really stand for much) that faubert reminded me a little of sinclair a couple of times.......maybe it's because he looks not too disimilar build wise

but apart from that, I still maintain we were giving them far too much space right from the off.......and except for 2 or 3 of our players, just looked generally so much slower
Agreed, and our first touch all over the park was awful IMO.
User avatar
Romford
Big X
Posts: 39027
Joined: Wed Dec 04, 2002 1:16 pm
Location: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eYyxdmHogLU
Contact:

Re: West Ham Utd v Chelsea: match thread

Post by Romford »

One thing i haven't seen yet is anyone declaring how much we are missing Bowyer...his power, energy and driving force in the centre of the park has been a major loss the last couple of games
User avatar
rare as rockinghorse shat
Posts: 55216
Joined: Sun Jan 23, 2005 2:43 am
Location: **** the board
Has liked: 3 likes
Total likes: 77 likes

Re: West Ham Utd v Chelsea: match thread

Post by rare as rockinghorse shat »

Romford wrote:One thing i haven't seen yet is anyone declaring how much we are missing Bowyer...his power, energy and driving force in the centre of the park has been a major loss the last couple of games
Agreed
User avatar
upton o'good
Posts: 11896
Joined: Thu Dec 05, 2002 9:50 am
Location: On the sofa, teaching Joanna to sing bubbles
Has liked: 7 likes
Total likes: 120 likes

Re: West Ham Utd v Chelsea: match thread

Post by upton o'good »

polar wrote:I was surprised by how much "football" Chelsea played yesterday. Without Drogba they had no need to resort to lumping it up to him. They seemed a better team with Anelka upfront. At were by far the best team we have seen play at UP this season.

Anelka was a different class he won so much in the air against Upson and Anton.

The movement of their midfield especially Cole and Ballack put our midfield to shame. Real "men against boys stuff" at times. I hope Noble watches the game and learns from it.

Agree with the earlier comments about their third goal, Ballack had acreas of space.

For Cole's goal, he stands still on the edge of the penalty area the defenders/midfield run away from him to defend the cross they are expecting, leaving him free to receive the ball back from Anelka and score. If I had hair I would have been pulling it out at the time.

No real positives to take from the game (Lampard apart).

If I was Curbs I try something different from the Liverpool game, let's try 4-4-2 and see if we can at least attack with a bit of pace rather than the snail's pace, sideways passing that we do at the moment.
I think we need to go with a 4-5-1, which would have been the right approach agsint Chelsea. Teh problem was that we played with something closer to a 4-4-1-1, that would have stifled the Chelsea of last season or before - but not the current vintage. Boa was clearly told to drop off and keep closing down Makelele whenever Chelsea had possession. They used to play everything through Makelele, but now run the game 10-15 yards further forward through Ballack, Lampard and Cole - who spent quite a lot of time central, giving them 3 players with movemement and only 2 midfielders tracking them. Not suprising that Noble and Mullins looked lost.

If we had played a third midfielder deep - Bowyer would have been good were he fit, in his absence (dare i say it?) Spector could have started.

I know we were at home, but agasint the to 4 you have to set up to be defensively solid, trying to trade attacks with them - which we did first half will always faila s they can afford players who are clinical and take their chances and we have Carlton.
Post Reply