West Ham's First Three Games
A team executing their plan to dominate field position and dominate Shot Tempo
Progression Podium Points
7: Rice
5: Coufal
3: Fornals, Cresswell
Shot Buildup Podium Points
7: Fornals
6: Antonio
2: Cresswell, Soucek
1: Rice
Receiving Progression Points
6: Benrahma
5: Antonio
4: Soucek
3: Fornals
West Ham have roared out of the gate with 10 goals and 7 points from 3 games with Michail Antonio becoming the early season standout that everyone falls over themselves to praise as Good. With a couple late signings, the mood has to be high around the club right now. There is a lot of good stuff going on
Field Position
Only the big two of City and Liverpool have better field position than West Ham. Of course this is fueled by the red cards and resultant overwhelming games all three teams had, but looking back at the box scores you can see the Hammers dominated all three games similarly.
Declan’s Lack of Ball Losses
The past 3 seasons Rice has been a 86-87% passer with just 4 yards progression per pass, just kind of a side to side guy. The passing part of his game has been his weakness for a while. It’s early of course, and the schedule has been very easy, but he’s bumped up to 93% with 5.7 yards per pass. The scouts have long been ahead of the stats on Rice, maybe he’s making the leap toward joining the two evaluations together.
Breezing through opponents halves
Three teams have been challenged less per pass in opponents halves: Man City, Liverpool and Chelsea. On the other end we have Palace, Norwich, and Watford. I know which side of this metric I want to be on. West Ham are creating lots of space with their attacking moves and the attacks are extremely efficient in creating shots.
West Ham are 5th in fewest shots per pass behind two direct teams in Everton and Burnley, along with two teams who have attacked brilliantly so far in Wolves and Liverpool. Great field position, space to pass in opponents halves, and ability to convert possessions into shots quickly has been the recipe to reaching double digits.
Stopping the fast break and slowing opponents down
Maybe the part that will please Moyes the most is the attack has worked without any hint of exposing the defense on the break. West Ham have given up just a single long fast break the past two matches…that has happened only 3 other times in total. West Ham’s defense is set, standard and hard to break through for clean and dangerous looks: their block rate is above league average. This doesn’t mean they are shutting down the opposition with a stifling, pressing defense: they’ve concede progression easier than league average in every single game so far. Only Man City and Wolves have forced opponents to make more passes per shot attempted though. So far this season if West Ham have had 300 passes and their opponents 300, you’d expect the Hammers to have a 4 shot edge…only Wolves, Everton, and Liverpool have bigger edges there.
Vlasic for Bowen?
The signing of Nikola Vlasic was the most exciting move at the end of the window for West Ham, but also one that triggered me wondering whose spot comes at risk? West Ham have played a static lineup with very few sub minutes. Benrahma/Fornals/Bowen have played behind Antonio and one of them likely would lose out if Vlasic comes in. So who will it be?
Bowen clearly lags on both charts: the first showing he’s last in both shot buildup involvements and total progression and the second showing he’s also last as a receiving outlet.
Part of that could easily be simply Rice gets more of the ball and does more of the progressive passing than Soucek and Rice prefers to go left to Benrahma
All the attacking three get supplied by the fullbacks
but Bowen’s “problem” is a huge portion of his supply line comes directly from Coufal. About half of his progressive receiving comes from Coufal, then scraps come from Rice, Fornals and Soucek
while the others have diverse sourcing: Fornals top supplier is Cresswell at just 22% of his total, with big chunks from Coufal/Benrahma/Rice/Soucek. It’s a similar story for Benrahma
Vlasic can seemingly play anywhere in the 3 behind Antonio. It’s early but he might start working wide right…a totally fluid, interactive three with Vlasic/Fornals/Benrahma…right now Bowen is a bit of a separate unit from the other two, if they can get that all working.
I've got a warm feeling toward West Ham after they delivered on a 12/1 Top Six bet last year…this year there will be more questions to answer as the competition gets harder and European nights start up but early signs show a well put together team that knows it’s strengths and works well toward them.