It’s three defeats from the opening three Premier League games from West Ham who now sit bottom of the table without a single goal scored. Brighton’s intricate passing structures proved too much for David Moyes’ team who were severely outmatched in midfield and failed to really take control of the game at any stage.
Lukasz Fabianski – 7
Fabianski could do nothing about either of the goals and was relatively unchallenged otherwise with Brighton only having the two shots on target in the game. He made a couple of good claims from crosses and one important punched clearance as Leandro Trossard crossed the ball towards Pascal Groß.
Vladimír Coufal – 7
Possibly our best performer in the first half, Coufal’s match ended terribly with a key mistake to gift Brighton their second before he was knocked out in a collision with Brighton substitute Pervis Estupiñan. It was a horrible five minutes that undermined an otherwise positive display where his energy to get out and press Trossard, who played the first 63 minutes of the game at left wing-back, had been crucial in minimising Brighton’s threat down their left side.
Kurt Zouma – 5
Where Zouma had previously been joined by Ben Johnson in the centre of our defence this season, new signing Thilo Kehrer was slotted in alongside him on Sunday. And the partnership showed exactly the sort of issues we anticipated in our scout report on Kehrer last week. With both players keen to defend more aggressively, there were large gaps left at times for Brighton to exploit. This can’t be described as anything other than a difficult day at the office where the progressive expectations placed on Zouma, due to the team’s failures in second phase build-up, led to mistakes like that which we saw for the first goal. Far from his imperious best.
Thilo Kehrer – 6
Although Kehrer had an absolute moment of madness for Brighton’s first goal where he chopped down Danny Welbeck on the edge of the penalty area, thankfully just on the line where he would concede a penalty rather than being sent off, there were some positive signs in the German’s first appearance in the Premier League. His front-footed defending will clearly be more well suited to a back three system, and there are questions over whether the gaps he leaves will cause problems that outweigh the positives of his higher turnovers, but it was nice to see a defender so comfortable on the ball with good timing in the air. He is clearly an imperfect player but one that could be impactful when used correctly.
Aaron Cresswell – 7
Frustration with the aggressiveness of this Cresswell showing misses the necessity of executing a high press on the opposition wing-backs. When committing your frontline so high up the pitch to try and force mistakes from the Brighton back three, or four if you include Robert Sánchez, the full-backs must back this up by stopping the opposition wing-backs from being free escape routes for the Brighton defence. With constant overloads in midfield occurring, it’s an impossibility for Declan Rice or Tomáš Souček to drift across as they might normally and this meant that these battles were left as clear 1v1s: Cresswell vs March and Coufal vs Trossard. And both full-backs managed these duels well. It’s been a particularly good start to the season for Cresswell who has combined assured defensive displays against Phil Foden and Solly March with some of the team’s most positive attacking work. Again, he played four progressive passes here (team high) and provided two key passes (team high) – excellent crosses for Souček which were well blocked and saved by Adam Webster and Sánchez.
Tomáš Souček – 6
He’s come under huge criticism for quite some time now but you do sometimes wonder whether people have a grasp of what Souček’s strengths are and what his role often is in the team. The balance between him and Declan Rice has clearly been modified back to Rice sitting deeper while Souček hits the box and we’ve been hugely unlucky not to see the benefit of this switch so far this season. Generating 1.0 NPxG over the first three games, Souček is miles ahead of the next best Hammer (Michail Antonio at 0.3) and has been the victim of some fantastic goalkeepeing (Sánchez), some goalline skulduggery (Scott McKenna) and some lax finishing of his own. He was very unfortunate not to score in this game where he exhibited fantastic movement in the box on three separate occasions. The question should not be: Is Tomáš Souček bad? It should be: Are we able to support Tomáš Souček’s box threat well enough for it to be of value right now or do we need a more progressively capable midfielder?
If there’s a major concern with Souček right now, it’s not his passing which is currently the best it has ever been (19-20: 73.1%, 20-21: 78.7%, 21-22: 80.5%, 22-23: 82.6%), it’s his defensive work. Average press success has dropped by 6.2% and his success when tackling opposition dribblers has plummeted to 16.7% (a 20.1% decrease). Although, with his xG generation being the highest it’s ever been, it must be said that things would look very different if he’d scored a couple already this season – he’s certainly the only person who has looked likely.
Declan Rice – 5
With more progressive responsibility on his shoulders, Rice has wilted so far this season and his second half display against Brighton on Sunday was the worst we’ve seen from him in an awfully long time. There’s a real lethargy about his performances right now with a total lack of invention and speed of thought on the ball. His pass success is the lowest it’s been since he first came into the side in 2017-18 (85.1%) and those trademark progressive carries that he’s built a reputation around have tanked from 7.11 per 90 all the way down to 3.33. He ran forwards with the ball just twice against Brighton where Zouma managed six. He is capable of a much higher level than that which he is hitting right now.
Fan commentary would suggest that Souček has been the underperformer in the partnership but the data supports the notion that the Czech has always offered the same qualities to the team where Rice is failing to hit his usual levels with the ball.
Jarrod Bowen – 7
This was another all-round strong display from Bowen who looks to have recovered his form in the last week with two back-to-back displays that had all of the positive qualities we became accustomed to last season. Six progressive carries, three shot creating actions and an impressive off-ball display with the second most pressures on the pitch (21) while maintaining a very respectable 33% success point to exactly the kind of form we saw in his best moments last season. If he continues to play like this, the Premier League goals will come.
Pablo Fornals – 5
Given an utterly thankless task of joining Antonio at the top of a dysfunctional press, Fornals couldn’t get into the game at all on Sunday. We saw his best work against Nottingham Forest where he was allowed to operate from a little deeper and saw a huge drop-off with him returning to the number ten position against Brighton. He spent most of the game chasing shadows while 2v1 against Alexis Mac Allister and Moisés Caicedo and scarcely received the ball from the wooden partnership behind him in midfield. It’s hard to see how the 4231 system maximises the abilities of any of the possible number tens in possession…
Saïd Benrahma – 5
Similarly to Fornals, Benrahma found himself struggling to really become active in the game and saw just 2.3% possession of the ball. He made fewer pressures than the other forwards and couldn’t really get much going in possession. This wasn’t a bad display, just one where he struggled to get involved in a faltering team performance.
Michail Antonio – 7
Feeding off scraps would be an understatement but Antonio did a great job of chasing down lost causes and trying to get something going for West Ham in transition. He pressed relentlessly on Lewis Dunk and Sánchez despite the two having the huge advantage of being able to split wide and force him to cover huge distances and he still managed to record an incredible 40% success from those pressures. This was a tireless performance that may have gone slightly under the radar thanks to the lack of quality service in possession.
Gianluca Scamacca – 6
Scamacca replaced Fornals in the 62nd minute but was largely anonymous until the final few minutes of the match where his quality began to show as Brighton dropped off. If there was ever evidence of the team needing to be in a different place to get the best out of the Italian then this was that. When crawling through a match and only managing to punt the ball up to the striker with no support, Antonio is probably the player to have.
Maxwel Cornet – 5
Added very little from the bench.
Manuel Lanzini – 5
Disastrous for the first 16 minutes, excellent in the final two.
Ben Johnson – 8
It has to be a particularly bad game for a 75th minute substitute to get the highest rating but Johnson added energy and enthusiasm to a team that looked bereft of confidence when he came on. Quarter of an hour with 100% pass completion, one key pass (an excellent cross for Souček) and total security at the back, this was a fantastic little cameo.
Brighton: Sánchez (7), Veltman (9), Dunk (7), Webster (9), March (7), Mac Allister (8), Caicedo (7), Trossard (8), Groß (7), Lallana (6), Welbeck (7); Estupiñan (7).
