David Moyes has been Brendan Rodgers’ kryptonite in recent seasons with the reactive mid-press that Moyes has employed with West Ham proving impossible for Rodgers’ Leicester to play through. Quite comfortable in letting Leicester’s centre-backs have possession, West Ham’s midfielders and forwards will sit off in a 442 shape with the two most advanced players, Michail Antonio and Manuel Lanzini on Sunday, screening passing lanes into Leicester’s defensive midfielders.
The key aim here is to force Leicester to funnel possession down the flanks where West Ham can engage aggressively in advantageous 3v3s with the touchline keeping the net tight. For example, if Antonio stays close to Youri Tielemans and Leicester are forced to play to the right side through Daniel Amartey and Ricardo Pereira, West Ham can engage with Declan Rice, Pablo Fornals and Aaron Cresswell rapidly to either force a rushed long ball and resultant turnover or a ball into a pressed player where there is a chance for a high turnover.
Of course, there are ways to break beyond this. Confidence in possession from the centre-backs is key and where Leicester can force one of the front two to engage, the gaps can begin to form in the overcompensations that may then occur further back.
Here you can see how Caglar Soyuncu carrying the ball over the halfway line takes him beyond Antonio and forces Lanzini across to engage. With sensible and effective rotations happening ahead of him, Patson Daka dropping in and dragging Craig Dawson out and Harvey Barnes attacking the empty space and dragging Vladimir Coufal inside, the space opens up for James Justin to bomb on down our right flank unopposed and Soyuncu is able to play a simple straight ball through the half-space.
The issue has often been that Leicester struggle for this kind of confidence and competency in possession in defence and don’t have alternative routes to build play without a real physical threat at the top of the pitch. And this is what makes West Ham’s mid-press so effective in these games. The out-ball in longer passes is an unattractive option as Leicester’s players know that it will generally lead to a turnover and their keenness to keep to shorter passes can lead to risks being taken in deeper areas where West Ham can occasionally turnover and threaten quickly.
And this leads us onto the second area in which Rodgers’ Leicester have really struggled against West Ham. In the first few seconds following a turnover in possession, Leicester have a terrible tendency to switch off and Moyes’ side target this in trying to play forward extremely quickly, often looking to play just one or two passes before hitting a ball in behind the centre-backs where Antonio’s excellent channel-running, strength and technical ability all come into play.
This strategy was in full effect for the opening 20 minutes of Sunday’s game and the opening goal provided a perfect example of Leicester’s softness to those balls in behind shortly after a turnover as Issa Diop looped one in behind for Jarrod Bowen to run onto and slot home.
Lanzini was the player to win the ball back in this example with Rice and Fornals exchanging quick passes before playing back to Diop. Although it may look as though Leicester are switched on following the turnover here, their focus remains forwards at all times and you can clearly see that they have completely failed to recover their defensive shape quickly enough when Diop plays his forward ball.
Leicester’s attempts to settle after the goal were then further undermined by West Ham’s set-up too. Keen to invite West Ham to press higher, Leicester played slowly around the back but West Ham remained disciplined in their tightness to the really threatening passers and Lanzini and Antonio in particular did a fantastic job of sliding and screening, disallowing passes into Ndidi and Tielemans. This eventually led to boos ringing out around the King Power as Leicester’s fans grew frustrated with their lack of progression in possession, a perfect testament to the strength of West Ham’s performance.
Perhaps most pleasingly for Moyes, his side’s strength off-the-ball wasn’t limited to this initial set-up either as when Leicester did manage to break through they were met by imperious defensive performances from Dawson and Diop. Diop in particular was outstanding in the first half and his intelligent defending against Daka proved crucial with the Frenchman making good decisions over when to press tight to the Zambian striker and when to drop-off a few yards to protect against the pace differential.
Frankly, the first 20 minutes were excellent. But this wouldn’t continue as the game fell into a lull where neither side created much of promise and that lull would lead to West Ham slowly slipping off the levels they started the game with, allowing Rodgers’ side to steadily grow in confidence.
The equaliser was still a shock though. Leicester had pressed a little for a goal through a few corners but it had never really felt like West Ham were all that troubled until Cresswell’s moment of madness. Handball, penalty, no complaints. 1-1. A ridiculous individual error to undo a good half’s work.
But West Ham responded well and the short period between the goal and half-time was possibly our best spell of the half. Those rapid transitions came back into play as Fornals and Rice combined to set Antonio away after Coufal’s interception in the 46th minute. And Antonio did brilliantly to turn and carry forwards beyond Amartey and find a ball across to Fornals; only for the Spaniard to get a little confused about what he was going to do and take a defensive body-position that allowed Tielemans to recover across and win a very good free-kick for his side.
Minutes later, we were away again as Bowen and Rice combined to set Fornals down the flank. His pull-back found Cresswell in acres of space 15 yards out only for the left-back to attempt a passed finish that he got all wrong; a fantastic opportunity squandered.
It would’ve felt strange for the players going in at half-time with the scores level. They’d largely executed the game-plan perfectly before everything had gone a bit mad with the penalty and unexpected equaliser. If there was anything that Moyes should’ve been concerned about though, it was that the growing trend of weak full-back performances was continuing here. All nine of the other players had had a steady half but Coufal had been prone to cheap giveaways (62% pass accuracy and six ball losses, five of those coming in the final eight minutes of the half) and Cresswell had fallen to pieces in the final third (0% crossing accuracy) and given a mad penalty away.
Perhaps a change in this area might’ve helped. Particularly at right-back with Coufal’s flurry of mistakes dovetailing horrifically with Tomas Soucek’s first half passing accuracy of 58%. With Dawson not far ahead on 64%, this leads into a broader point about how lopsided our build-up can often be.
Largely, I wouldn’t have too much of a problem with this as our strongest passers all stack up on that left-side in a typical Moyesian way (Baines, Arteta, Pienaar – Cresswell, Rice, Fornals) but high-fifties to mid-sixties pass completion rates on the right side are unsustainable and you do begin to wonder how much stronger this team would look with a more competent passer in one of the three slots on that side.
There were a few better moments early in the second half for West Ham, the best of which came again through Antonio as the Jamaican pulled out into the left channel and attacked the space between Pereira and Amartey to great effect. Found well by Lanzini, Antonio was able to get his head up and pick out a perfect cutback into Bowen who just failed to squeeze his shot between Soyuncu and Thomas.
This clever cross had been the perfect antidote to the theme of the game so far. Every time West Ham had found themselves in a positive crossing position, players had either taken too long or not taken long enough to set their sights before hitting a ball towards the box that invariably cannoned off the first man.
Given the amount of space this West Ham side regularly creates in the wide zones either side of the eighteen-yard-box, you’d think it’d be wise for players like Cresswell, Fornals, Bowen and Coufal to get some extra practise in because their quality in live-play in these situations has been consistently lacking of late.
And it was the Czech last mentioned there that would continue his alarming drop-off at the beginning of the second half as Leicester began to work out that giving the ball to Harvey Barnes was probably the best tactic they had. Barnes took on that responsibility well and he had Coufal on toast; once in the 52nd minute and again in the 56th minute before his 57th minute cross found Pereira and put Leicester 2-1 ahead.
This was the climax of our full-back implosion as Coufal gave the ball away, failed to stop Barnes’ cross and Cresswell fell asleep at the back stick to let Pereira steal in and guide a header into the top corner. Another bonkers goal to concede.
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An incredibly shabby ten minutes followed the goal with the gaps between the midfield and the defence reaching the absurdity threshold. If you’re going to press high and try to create traps deep in the middle third then you need your defenders to back this up with proactive decision-making when balls squirm over the top or through the lines.
But Barnes had our back four terrified and that had earned his side five yards with our line consistently choosing to drop off rather than push up and squeeze the spaces. This made it far too easy for Leicester and the change at right-back in the 67th minute was arguably a little late. Although Fredericks didn’t have a particularly outstanding game off the bench here, his recovery pace allowed for the confidence in taking up those proactive positions to return and we quickly regained control over the match.
Fornals and Bowen swapped flanks and Lanzini swapped with Soucek as we looked to try and get round the outside of Leicester’s full-backs to cross for two aerial threats in the box. And it only took a matter of moments for Lanzini to show us just what we’re missing when neither Soucek nor Rice has the energy to really grab hold of a game. Within minutes, the Argentinian was getting on the ball in central areas and punching passes through the lines.
This didn’t last long though as Lanzini showed all the defensive positioning nous of an attacking midfielder playing at six and was quickly subbed alongside Fornals for Vlasic and Benrahma.
Benrahma’s form has been patchy this season. There have been moments in games where everything seems to be coming off for him and moments where it all seems to go wrong and it was a mix of the two here. His directness proved to be a real problem for Leicester but his lack of end product from a couple of good openings let him down again. Crucially though, his confidence in coming and taking the ball off the defence eased the burden on Rice and helped us transition the ball forwards quickly. And it was Benrhama that eventually won the corner in the 91st minute that led to the equaliser.
Leicester have struggled all season with crosses into the box and it was hardly surprising that this came to bite them again as Bowen swung a perfectly weighted ball in from the right corner and Dawson outmuscled Amartey to make first contact, off his shoulder, and score a crucial goal in the race for European football.
We settled down after the goal, taking our foot off the gas and settling for a point that we probably knew we were lucky to get in the end. But this was a game we should never have let get away from us.
Moyes will be frustrated with the individual mistakes that let Leicester back into the game but more so with the way it affected the team. For a long period, we shrunk into ourselves and let a team bereft of confidence grow and take control. Perhaps this is symptomatic of missing leaders at the back like Angelo Ogbonna and Kurt Zouma, or of the general malaise that seems to have afflicted Coufal this season and Cresswell post-injury, or of the tiredness that is currently plaguing the performances of Rice and Soucek.
Whatever it is, next week is another cup final; all of the next thirteen are. The quality of the summer rebuild rests precariously on whether or not we manage to qualify for European football again and the competition is fierce with a point on Sunday failing to build the gap between us and Manchester United, Arsenal, Wolves and Spurs.
Jack Elderton 