Match Day West Ham v Bournemouth, Saturday 18 August 15:00

[SALTIRE]

Match chat.

 

[AFCB_Mark]

A Jack Wilshere derby!

After the pasting from Liverpool on the opening day, West Ham will be wanting to unleash a backlash on us. They played a high enough line as it was last week, let alone at home to a smaller side like us. We'll see if they bother with the defensive shield of Rice behind Wilshere and Noble, or whether they stick another attacking player in instead of Rice. I suspect the latter? I hope it's a decent time to play West Ham, before they bed in all their new signings and really get going.

If we can keep a reasonable shape and defend vaguely well, there's bound to be chances to break on that high line. Fraser, King, Wilson etc can cause serious problems. Defending well never comes easily for us though. Both teams to score is a fair bet.

South Western Trains staff are on strike most weekends at the moment, which makes a usually easy away day somewhat more of a hassle. 2000 of us crammed onto fewer trains than normal, stopping at every cowshed between here and Waterloo, fun.

 

[claret50]

I'm going for our first home win here, nothing too fancy, so maybe 2-1 or 2-0 with Arnie getting on the scoresheet.

 

[Pickleman1967]

A game where the stats, and a lazy "gut instinct" prophet like me, points to a draw. Bournemouth poor on the road but haven't lost to West Ham in two years. West Ham have spent a lot of money on new players who I think are probably not going to pull up any trees, and I think they need Lanzini available to give them a creative edge. Still, they are at home and will be hungry to get some points against a team that they are closely matched with.

West Ham 1 Bournemouth 1

 

[AFCB_Mark]

That was brilliant. Felt pretty hard done by being a goal down at half time, their penalty looked very offside in the build-up. And we missed a glorious chance or two.

Second half we played like daemons. First to everything, running everything down, fighting every second ball. Superb goal from Wilson to equalise, and before we knew what was happening we had the lead from a set piece.

After that we made good subs, saw the game out, let West Ham run out of ideas. They are far from settled or coherent.

6 points, awesome!

 

[Pickleman1967]

Enjoying the results this weekend, watching Spam get beat is as good as watching Arsenal get beat. MOTD is a must see tonight!

 

[claret50]

Well, Arnie scored and the result was 2-1, but unfortunately the wrong way round. - what-a-mistake-a-to make-a

Well done the cherries.

 

[big mean bunny]

The defending on that Wilson goal is hideous. Early days but seeing West Ham the last two weeks they have reminded me of Mccarthy Wolves defensively in the sense they have two cbs pushed on who clearly aren't comfortable doing that, hence the awful back tracking and angles they took to the ball.

 

[AFCB_Mark]

West Ham do have plenty to work on, their shape looks, well, not much like a shape. But with Arnautovic as a platform to build off they've got plenty to work with. He's consistently looked better for West Ham than he did for Stoke, somehow the club seems to suit him better. But around and behind him there isn't enough structure. Players just sort of float about giving Wilshere in possession a hard time picking out passes. He's no idea where to find people.

For our part we basically ran around a lot to snuff out the creative players and the supply to Arnautovic as much as we could, that effort combined with better organisation seemed to mostly do the trick, although West Ham had their moments especially first half.

The more I see David Brooks the more I love the bloke. He's a centre forward's dream midfielder, constantly getting the ball, looking up, and playing a killer through ball. He constantly makes something happen. I just hope that freedom, that enthusiasm, doesn't get coached out of him too much for the sake of systemic organisation. There's a balance to be struck and he's a free spirit that needs to be allowed to do his thing. I hope us and Howe are the right club to enable that. He's going to have a very good career, in the right systems. That Brooks won the free kick that led to the winner was well deserved.

That Wilson goal was what he did in the Championship every week back in the day. Now you can argue that is Callum fully recovering from all his injuries finally, or you can argue that was Championship level defending from West Ham. Probably a bit of both. Wilson missed an easier chance first half (from a Brooks through ball of course) so I'm hopeful there's still more to come from Wilson.

This is a great platform for us to build on. Have to keep the feet on the ground and remember it's been Cardiff who will struggle and a disorganised West Ham. But we're yet to give either Rico or Lerma their debuts, this is just last season's team with Brooks added. If those two can add something as well, then we've got a lot more to come.

Everton at home next will be tough, they look an improved attacking force these days. Should be an entertaining game that.