Tottenham put West Ham to the sword, slashing through them with four fine goals at White Hart Lane last night.
Tottenham and West Ham began this match level on points, but the two teams finished with a much larger gap between them, certainly in terms of the quality shown on the pitch. Tottenham were the better side by some distance, and their dominance was reflected in the 4-1 scoreline, with Harry Kane scoring twice. Moussa Dembele continued his imperious run of form, and Christian Eriksen sparkled on home soil. And where Spurs were flushed in the attacking midfield area, West Ham sorely missed their injured No. 10, Dimitri Payet, looking frazzled and uninspired without him.
Slaven Bilic will be concerned not only about his team’s toothlessness, but also their inability to keep a clean sheet. Slack-mindedness was the hallmark here, with Mark Noble picking up a yellow card that will rule him out of the next fixture, capping a highly ho-hum display. The only positive for the Hammers was the sight of a fit Alex Song taking the field when Noble was substituted.
As for Spurs, they remain unbeaten at home – only Manchester United have a similarly stellar home record – and look, perhaps for the first time, equipped to secure a top four spot with ease. Harry Kane is scoring regularly, and in Dele Alli they have the league’s most promising prospect.
West Ham, as expected, suffer without Payet
Being shorn of your best player is never an easy thing to brush off, but it’s particularly difficult when the player in question is so crucial to the very functionality of the team. Without Eden Hazard, for example, Chelsea are stripped of an attacking spike, but they shouldn’t fall apart structurally without him. For West Ham, Dimitri Payet has become so central to the attacking system that without him, the Hammers run a very real risk of total offensive impotence.
The first half here gave no firm indication that West Ham will be able to attack ably without their French talisman. Manuel Lanzini is a skilled, quicksilver player, but his method of creating space for himself involves twirling away from tacklers, usually back towards his own goal. When a team presses as furiously as Pochettino’s Spurs tend to, twirls like these stifle the attack. Payet is able to buy space and time for himself with perhaps the league’s vastest array of tricks, and his guile was missed here. Multiple West Ham counter-attacks fell over when they got to the part of the pitch Payet usually lurks in, the ball searching for the Frenchman and not finding him.
Dele Alli’s England hangover
Alli appeared in the starting lineup graphic positioned alongside Eric Dier, much as he was for England against France last week. In actual fact, he was to enact a more advanced role, swapping occasionally with Moussa Dembele. Debate over his suitability for either position trundles on, and at 19 he has plenty of time to answer any and all of these sorts of questions.
He was everywhere for England, but was less present here, despite hitting the bar with a brave header following Son’s shot in the first half. He was hardly seen on the ball, and most of his forward runs weren’t picked up by his team mates. West Ham did a fine job swarming on Alli whenever he had a sniff of possession, and Mark Noble put a couple of ‘remember-me’ challenges on the youngster in the opening stanza. His evening remained unremarkable after half time; he strayed offside once or twice, and had a half-hearted shot blocked. A bit of afters with Noble meant Alli picked up one booking too many, and he won’t face Chelsea next week. This was nothing like his England Man of the Match performance, but he has plenty of time to entertain the Lane in the coming years.
Carroll as part of a big/little striking duo
Since his return to the starting lineup, Andy Carroll has looked more often like a disjointed, incoherent part of the team than an organic asset. His melding with the skills and intuitions of those stationed behind him is yet to occur fully, and here he started as the main striker once again. But there was a difference; the vacancy Payet’s injury has made in the starting XI was filled by Diafra Sakho, returning from injury himself, and he played a secondary strikers role, the ‘little’ to Carroll’s ‘big’. The Senegalese took up a protective wingers role when Tottenham forayed into the West Ham half, but when West Ham were in possession, he floated, hoping to feed on any Carroll-borne scraps.
Alas, this new partnership failed to produce anything, in a first half where the only West Ham attack of note struck the bar, and was clearly offside, though not flagged as such. Again, Carroll was ineffective, and Sakho and he didn’t link up with any great natural chemistry. Carroll was subbed just after the hour mark, and the quandary deepens.
Kane’s second season syndrome receding into the distance
Harry Kane, seemingly scoring, as they sing at White Hart Lane, when he wanted to last season, did not find the goals quite so free-flowing this season. Cries of second-season syndrome were in full voice when he scored only one league goal in the first nine games of the 15/16 season, but that meagre spell was broken with a hat-trick against Bournemouth in October. He’s now scored six goals in his last four Premier League matches. He opened the scoring here, smartly turning Carl Jenkinson and lashing home, but then, later in the first half, missed a golden chance to score what would have been Spurs’ third goal; one-on-one with Adrian, and with half an age to size up a shot, he screwed wide to such a degree, it was scarcely believable.
He made up for that miss, and with relish, as he punished a James Tomkins error, sniping the ball under a diving Adrian from the edge of the area. Kane didn’t really get going last season until it was 15 games old, and he’s heating up at a similar time this term.
Nine matches without a clean sheet for West Ham
The title says it all, really. West Ham have found conceding easy, and have made life extremely difficult for themselves as a result. Tottenham’s first goal came from a somewhat lucky pinballing after a Reid tackle, but Spurs’ second came directly from a mistake from James Tomkins. Defending had to have been a priority for Bilic over the international break, particularly with him knowing, and stating publically, just how seriously Payet’s injury will hamper the attack. There was no evidence of any such diligence in West Ham’s defending here.
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