Controversial I know but I thought Dier had a good game.
We conceded from a set piece 2 weeks running where we miss a header. I don’t think it was Romero this time but it was side and where he should have been. Early days so hopefully he will get better.
Game deserved a draw or Spurs win, but we came away with nothing. That’s football sometimes.
I popped in here to add a half-time comment where I wanted to highlight a point I've been banging on about in the Dier thread. Fans need to look and the dynamic of our two CB's right now, the partnership is clearly in it's infancy but I like it. It has Romero has the aggressor, playing as he dose on the front foot, looking to get ahead of the CF as the ball is played to him, give him a rough game by challenging and competing for every ball, rather than dropping off him a bit to avoid getting rolled or beat in a 1vs1.
Whilst Romero is doing this it's Dier that's anchoring behind him. It's high risk as when I popped in here at half-time I was drawing to the two occasions that Romero lost his duels 1v1 with Antonio, but Dier was positionally covering and nothing came of the two times.
But across the game, it was Romero that came out on top between those two. Twice in the 2nd half, Romero followed Antonio dropping deep to receive the ball, he ended up winning on both occasions and set up attacks on both occasions, one of which he remained up the pitch. I really like this but fans have to accept that it's high risk that he will miss one of these duels and it will result in a goal scored, see Villa's goal for an example. But fans who have no idea what's going on here seem to blame Dier for it!!!
Antonio's goal was scored by Kane, the man marker just didn't compete for the ball, very poor from him. Our CB's are zonal, so not marking (another point I made last week to the Dier haters who said he wasn't making anyone).
I think Spurs were the better of the two sides (West Ham were better in the 1st 10 mins and I thought they played quite well following the goal) but really Lloris was a total spectator during this game.
Whilst I think Spurs were the better side, I still don't think they deserved to win, I thought they defended well and the midfield controlled the majority of the game but Spurs attack was woeful! There were a couple of nice combinations in the first half but Kane in particular was very, very poor. So many games in the past we've seen Kane spray beautiful passes to Son etc..He got himself on the ball in those positions but every pass didn't find it's mark.
It wasn't just Kane though the entire front 4 (including Ndombele in this) just didn't play with any intensity, I think this was deliberate. This was particularly annoying as I thought West Ham was there for the taking had Spurs attacked as we know they can (also because West Ham would struggle given 50% of their team played Thursday and 100% of Spurs team didn't). Also back to Kane, it's a similar situation going on with Man U and Ronaldo, neither of these players press and I think it affects negatively the dynamic of the team (Engalnd too).
There is a lot of Hyperbole around BOTH teams at the moment, whilst Moyes has done a decent job at West Ham (a mid-table at best but normally still in a relegation scrap with 5 games to go) 2nd time around they are still a side totally reliant on set pieces and Antonio. "high-flying west ham" are still only 2pts ahead of Spurs and really, really could have lost this game against a poor attacking Spurs side yesterday.
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