Before West Ham’s Premier League season restarts with a trip to Arsenal on Boxing Day, let’s take a look back at the first half of the season and review the progress (or otherwise) of the team and the individuals within. In this first section of our review, we’ll be looking at some of the data relating to chance creation, shots, and finishing.
One of the hottest topics surrounding West Ham this season has been finishing underperformance and, as per Opta data, West Ham sit 19th in the table when comparing total xG (18.6 – 11th) to goals scored (12 – 17th). When removing penalties from the data, things are no more promising as David Moyes’ team have still scored six goals fewer than expected (16.2 npxG, 12 goals = -6.2npxG). For comparison, Manchester City sit top of this table with a finishing overperformance of 10.7 – thanks largely to Erling Haaland who is currently overperforming his xG by 6.3 with the next closest player being James Maddison (4.4).
The only players in the West Ham squad performing positively in front of goal so far are Declan Rice and Pablo Fornals and the Spaniard’s positive placement can be attributed to his winning goal against Aston Villa – a 0.04 xG shot that looped over Emiliano Martínez thanks to a massive deflection off of Ezri Konsa. That anomaly aside, West Ham have been demonstrably poor in front of goal this season.
Though bad finishing has been central to West Ham’s struggles, this has been compounded by additionally underwhelming chance creation and shot selection.
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