Defining a playing style is not the top priority at West Ham. When Graham Potter arrived the results were poor and the Hammers were shipping goals. Now that the ship has been steadied, what are we likely to see for the rest of the season – as Potter develops his own design at London Stadium.
Interesting, then, reading and listening to player comments and indeed Potter’s own words – which offer clues as to the road map for the rest of the season. When defender Konstantinos Mavropanos spoke to whufc.com he lifted the lid on Potter’s preferred system and where the emphasis has been in training:
“We work a lot with the back five [system]. I think we’ve done well in that system, we’ve only conceded once with the previous three games, and then once today.”
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Clearly Potter has designs on sticking to the back three plus wing backs system at West Ham. However, not in the style seen in the first half against Everton yesterday. The Hammers manager was unhappy with his team’s positioning and told them at half time.
Potter’s own words: “We were a little bit disappointed with the first half as we felt we were a little bit deeper than we wanted to be, but I think we fixed that at half-time and in the second half we were a lot better”.
Which we’d all agree with. West Ham certainly invited Everton onto them in the first half on Saturday.
So, going forward, the summary would seem to be a : ‘higher-line three at the back plus two wing- backs’ for the foreseeable future, judging by what the coach is practising with the team.
It is easy to forget that this is the team’s third head coach inside a year and so learning another preferred system and a third Manager’s plan will ,to use that hackneyed phrase, ‘take time’. It does seem that Potter has stemmed the goal flood at one end.
Now creating a goal flood – or even a trickle – at the other end of the pitch needs to be his focus for the last ten games.