West Ham United - Nottingham Forest

[JollyLolly]

Wassey04, nope!

[Plymouth red]

At least Bournemouth are getting stuffed

[zicorice]

On train on way home, not a great day, yet another away defeat. Some reactions over the top though.

Positives
- We don't have to play home games in a soulless crap stadium like they do
- 1 less game without Serge.
- For 70 odd minutes I thought we might nick a point.
- The GK thread argument may have been put to bed now. I love Navas  but he's not as dominant as Hendo.

Negatives
- We rarely look like scoring.
- We did that one goal and collapse thing again.
- we are really feeling the injuries biting deep now. One or two players looked like they needed subbing  but we had no option to do that in their Position.

Tough times. Even more important that everyone sticks together.

[JollyLolly]

I hate moaning but! SC is always coming out with the same statement these days when we just do not perform away from home, using words like unacceptable and the like. But Steve you have said this most of the season, you have the power to make us perform much better away from home so change it man! I have said many time on this forum this season that if we go down SC will regret that he lacked a positive attitude away from home, also the fact that he did not make changes to effect games until the race was lost, over to you Steve!

[BadDog]

He made changes today, but they actually cost us the game.

[Fumanchew]

You can say this and that, but after the first goal we can’t just keep giving the ball away from kick off. There were times you could see when Navas collected the call there were no quick points to distribute too, we let them have too many crossed what happened to going to the man and harrying them with the ball, you can scream tactics but still some basic things not being done

[JWJW]

We do not have any midfield outlet......

Worrall keeps giving the ball away........

Even JJS had nowhere to pass to.........

Its too much hoof it up, lose it and then defend until you get it back, then lose the ball again within 30 seconds...repeat repeat repeat.

Our midfield has no creative outlet, I would like to see Scarpa in and either Colback or Freuler out.

You could see JJS was pissed off being subbed......and we looked even worse after that and conceded 4 goals.

The team needs someone who can put their foot on the ball and do something with it in the middle of the park.

The moment JJS went off it all went wrong.

That was all down to Steve Coopers team selection and tactics and he should be man enough to admit he messed up badly.

[Salvatore Matrecano]

We do not have any midfield outlet......

Worrall keeps giving the ball away........

Even JJS had nowhere to pass to.........

Its too much hoof it up, lose it and then defend until you get it back, then lose the ball again within 30 seconds...repeat repeat repeat.

Our midfield has no creative outlet, I would like to see Scarpa in and either Colback or Freuler out.

You could see JJS was pissed off being subbed......and we looked even worse after that and conceded 4 goals.

The team needs someone who can put their foot on the ball and do something with it in the middle of the park.

The moment JJS went off it all went wrong.

That was all down to Steve Coopers team selection and tactics and he should be man enough to admit he messed up badly.

This is pretty well my thoughts too. Its the lack of ball retention and passing form midfield.

Shelvey went off because he was knackered and we can’t risk an injury
Worrall tries his diagonal pass which was effective last season but it isn’t at a higher level
Scarpa would like to see him too although in Coopers thoughts it may be with Williams at RB instead of Aurier he needs someone better defensively ahead of him.

Ayew - I know he is Coopers man which is fine but I wish someone could explain it to me.

[zicorice]

We do not have any midfield outlet......

Worrall keeps giving the ball away........

Even JJS had nowhere to pass to.........

Its too much hoof it up, lose it and then defend until you get it back, then lose the ball again within 30 seconds...repeat repeat repeat.

Our midfield has no creative outlet, I would like to see Scarpa in and either Colback or Freuler out.

You could see JJS was pissed off being subbed......and we looked even worse after that and conceded 4 goals.

The team needs someone who can put their foot on the ball and do something with it in the middle of the park.

The moment JJS went off it all went wrong.

That was all down to Steve Coopers team selection and tactics and he should be man enough to admit he messed up badly.

I assume you were at the game? 

You may or may not be right about some of these points, but JJS was blowing out of his ar$e before he was subbed. Completely understandable considering how long he's been out and the fact he managed around 70 minutes was a bonus. Pushing him too hard could easily cause a repeat of his injury....ask Niakhate how that feels.

Of course we performed poorly 2nd half, but Declan Rice was superb which contributed hugely to their midfield domination. 

Someone has already said earlier all this talk of being more attacking away from home - especially with the injuries we have now - got us battered at Newcastle, Man City and Leicester.  We had a disastrous 15 minutes (again) after SC made an attacking substitution, otherwise we were heading for a dull 0-0 which I would happily have taken prior to the game. 

It's the home form that is important this season. I'm saying that despite the money I've spent travelling all over witnessing our away form.

[Paplane]

If we do happen to stay up this season then Cooper's going to have to sort the away approach out. Next season we wont be able to rely on home form as all the teams will have experienced our place and will be ready and prepared for it. So far we've scored 3 away goals and conceded loads. That really is pathetic. We have better players than at the beginning of the season and yet are still miles behind the curve away from home. Why is this? I cant work out why.

[DR Forest]

If we do happen to stay up this season then Cooper's going to have to sort the away approach out. Next season we wont be able to rely on home form as all the teams will have experienced our place and will be ready and prepared for it. So far we've scored 3 away goals and conceded loads. That really is pathetic. We have better players than at the beginning of the season and yet are still miles behind the curve away from home. Why is this? I cant work out why.

Because we are still an incomplete project and poor team compared to most.
When we play at home with 12th man (the crowd) we can edge games.
When we play away and that is reversed, then we suffer.

We need to hang on this season and then buy the 5/6 better level players we need.
Some of our players just aren’t good enough for comfortable mid table survival, which we need to provide the stable platform to develop and attract top level players.

I can see a lot leaving this summer and maybe another £100-150m spent on those 5/6 quality players.
We have to be patient but that’s difficult when the stakes are so high.

On the bright side MGW BJ Taiwo and Danilo should continue their development and blend with the newbies next season. But first we need to deal with the present and we definitely need kouyate Taiwo serge Niakhate Yates back asap and for them to stay fit.

[wassy04]

Who do we think have been our best players this year so far? Who'd win a POTS vote?

Probably be between Yates, Aurier, MGW right? We were missing two of them plus Boly and Taiwo last night!

Take three of the best four players out of any team and they'll be worse (aside from Man City).

I think we've done incredibly well to have this many points on the board despite the injuries. Just need to get Yates and Aurier back fit and in the team. Yatesy has been such a big miss, he really is the engine of the team. Disappointed he wasn't on the bench yesterday, hope there's been no setback.