I wanted to do another quick piece looking at the strength of West Ham’s defensive shape, structure, and tactical understanding in the first half at the Etihad last night and how Pep Guardiola’s increased usage of De Zerbian build-up principles slowly began to break it down.
Until Angelo Ogbonna’s moment of foolishness from a set-piece early in the second period, West Ham were largely comfortable from a defensive perspective against Manchester City whilst being without key players Declan Rice, Tomáš Souček, and Nayef Aguerd who all pulled out on the day thanks to a combination of food poisoning and unrelated illness. How did they do it?
Curiously, given the expectations of fans and pundits, West Ham started Wednesday’s game with clear intent to press City in first phase build-up. This wouldn’t be replicated through all phases and West Ham’s sensible passivity against City in second phase (or as they progressed to within ten yards of the halfway line) was the main reason behind David Moyes’ side recording their highest, and therefore least intense, pressing numbers so far this season – 40 PPDA. But Moyes did opt for an adventurous 4-2-4 shape against Guardiola’s team when pressuring City close to their goal.
Emerson Palmieri stepped up to join a three behind Michail Antonio while Lucas Paquetá’s advancement to mark John Stones on the right hand side of City’s double-pivot made a de facto four in midfield (or 3+1 if you wanted to look at it purely on horizontal lines) with Flynn Downes covering behind. This shape enabled West Ham to press intensely against City’s backline in advanced areas which naturally created the opportunity for high turnovers that would require little ingenuity to be converted into real chances.
As you might expect, with the quality of City’s personnel in these positions, it took a little while before one such moment emerged but it eventually came in the 29th minute when Vladimír Coufal’s pressing on Jack Grealish took him all the way into the City penalty area with the opportunity to disconnect and press Stefan Ortega at the point that Grealish released the pass.
With Emerson, Jarrod Bowen and Pablo Fornals all in position to capitalise on this pressure, Ortega opted for a difficult pass over the top of the pressing unit and the ball went straight out of play. Coufal raced back to play a quick throw over the top for Bowen – the Czech’s favourite move from dead ball situations, one that sort of reminds you of the training ground move we tried ad nauseam between Mark Noble and Kevin Nolan under Sam Allardyce – and the winger got into a position where he really should have cut the ball back for Emerson to score.
It’s hard to call this a chance from a high turnover but I would suggest that it came from the deployment of the advanced shape discussed in combination with diligent man-to-man pressing from Coufal.
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