- Jun 4, 2004
- 5,346
- 12,398
It's amazing how much the result influences these ratings here. Make no mistake, the first half was very poor and very few players can come away with any credit from it. The opening goal was a complete fluke and should have been disallowed, that meant West Ham had to come out and attack us which left space for Kane to get his goal. If it had been disallowed and we'd dropped points then half of you praising our players would be giving much lower scores.
GLC was easily the best player on the pitch. The back five all did pretty well particularly Dier. Kane was crap in the first half but got much better in the second. We looked a lot better when Lamela and Bergwijn came on. Alli and Son were both very poor (Son's disallowed goal aside), Lucas and Sissoko had a couple of good moments but largely ineffective.
I hear what you're saying but equally you're taking quite a negative view of the game. "if it had been disallowed and we'd dropped points....". There was plenty of time left and that goal was clearly coming. I agree that the 1st half hour wasn't good enough but West Ham offered barely anything, we defended pretty well and it was mainly that we just needed to be more clinical in front of goal.
To my mind there's a sort of pre-season rustiness to our game and that can be said for other teams too since the restart. There's been a number of 0-0 draws and lack of quality in general. I also have no doubts that the lack of atmosphere is having an impact too. Football is basically nothing without the fans there.
We absolutely need to improve and the side needs better balance desperately but there are signs of something good there IMO.