Andy Carroll's return to the first team has increased West Ham's use of the 'long ball' - although not by as much as you might imagine.
Prior to the Christmas programme, KUMB published a table showing how frequently the long ball was being used, in the wake of constant claims that Sam Allardyce's team was still as direct as before.A popular view is that the return of Andy Carroll to the starting XI has seen increased use of long, direct passes to the front man - and as our table illustrates, of West Ham's 20 Premier League games so far this season Carroll appears in all but two of of the top ten games in which the long ball has been most employed.
Yet only once this season have more than a quarter of West Ham's passes been of the long variety - and that was in the 2-1 win against Manchester City, when Diafra Sakho and Enner Valencia were the chosen front two.
To give an indication of whether Carroll's return had seen a return to more direct football, we've updated our chart to include all games leading up to and including today's 1-1 draw with West Bromwich Albion.
And although the evidence suggests the team are slightly more inclined to go direct with Carroll in the team, the difference is negligible - which goes some way to exposing the myth that West Ham with Carroll have just one way of playing.
West Ham United: long passes this season
(total passes in parenthesis)
1. Sakho & Valencia v Man City (h): 70 (239) 29.3%
2. Carroll v Chelsea (a): 72 (300) 24.0%
3. Carroll & Sakho v Leicester (h): 78 (347) 22.5%
4. Carroll & Zarate v West Brom (a): 80 (362) 22.1%
5. Valencia v Stoke (a): 64 (307) 20.8%
6. Carroll & Cole v Everton (a): 69 (340) 20.3%
7. Carroll & Valencia v Swansea (h): 81 (405) 20.0%
8. Carroll & Sakho v Arsenal (h): 76 (385) 19.7%
9. Cole & Vaz Te v Southampton (h): 63 (337) 18.7%
10. Carroll v Newcastle (h): 68 (367) 18.5%
11. Carroll & Sakho v Sunderland (a): 61 (334) 18.3%
12. Sakho & Valencia v Liverpool (h): 50 (276) 18.1%
13. Sakho & Valencia v Queens Park Rangers (h): 72 (402) 17.9%
14. Sakho & Valencia v Burnley (a): 75 (425) 17.6%
15. Carroll & Sakho v West Brom (h): 68 (396) 17.2%
16. Sakho & Valencia v Aston Villa (h): 68 (431) 15.8%
17. Cole & Vaz Te v Tottenham (h): 65 (414) 15.7%
18. Cole & Vaz Te v Crystal Palace (a): 69 (454) 15.2%
19. Sakho & Valencia v Man Utd (a): 50 (351) 14.3%
20. Sakho & Valencia v Hull (a): 55 (478) 11.5%
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