WHU blog: Squeaky bum time...

After over a month without blogging about West Ham United, I find myself writing about a football team who have drawn their last 5 games and after my last West Ham post, they were in 1st place, 6 points above Reading. They're now 4 points behind them, so what's changed?

Well to be honest, nothing much has changed.

There have only been injures to 3 important players - Reid, Vaz Te and Faubert, but the two latter players happen to be two of the most creative players at the club. However, the available players can't blame injures for drawing 6 games out of 7 since the match away to Blackpool. That amount of draws simply isn't acceptable for a team chasing automatic promotion, however if 3 of those 6 games had been wins we could be 2 points in front of Reading with a game in hand.

However, as usual with West Ham it hasn't gone to plan this season, but why is this?

Many fans are blaming the manager's long ball style. This is only part of the problem, the main issue is the formation. Sam Allardyce usually sets up the team in a 4-5-1 formation, with Carlton Cole on his own up front. He's a good striker but can't be expected to keep scoring goals with no one alongside him.

I feel that if the style and formation aren't changed soon, we could find ourselves in the play off places come the end of the season and we'll only get promoted automatically if we win all of our remaining games, including the one against Reading at Upton Park, which I can't see us winning at the moment.

How does Sam Allardyce turn things around? Like this:

SHORT TACTICS LESSON!

I've never been a fan of one player up front (in any formation) because it encourages the other 10 players to play the long ball. I like the 4-4-2 because it offers a lot of versatility, however not many top teams play this way anymore. A formation being used a lot is the 4-1-3-2 and this would suit West Ham perfectly, because the team (with all players fit) would probably be set up like this:

As you can see, this formation would give support to Carlton Cole and bring two different types of striker together. Kevin Nolan could do what he does best and sit just behind the strikers, with Faubert and Vaz Te on the wings putting crosses in for Cole to knock down to Maynard to SCORE A GOAL, which is something we have struggled to do when on level terms.

But what do I know about football? I'm only a 19 year old university student.

TB 2012