FIVE reasons West Ham WILL be ‘better’ this season

So that’s what it’s like to lose to Spurs, then?

Our last five meetings with them have seen us win three times and lose twice to last minute winners, which is just so unfair when you consider just how much fun it was to win those three games against them last season.

Anyway, there’s still a lot of reason to be upbeat about the coming season. We’re saw enough from that Spurs defeat to know that, with maybe one or two new faces in the side, we shouldn’t have many problems this season and a relegation scare shouldn’t constantly be on the back of our minds.

So here’s the FIVE reasons why I think we’ll be absolutely fine this season…

Click on a gutted Big Sam to reveal

Improved football


Pre-season didn’t really inspire us to embrace the new attacking philosophy the co-owners had demanded from Sam Allardyce.

But the win against Sampdoria and then the defeat to Spurs last weekend went some way in restoring our faith in Allardyce’s ability to adapt to what is something of an alien way of football management to him.

The below stat says it all, really. The likes of Aaron Cresswell at the back and Cheikhou Kouyate in the middle clearly went some way in ensuring we didn’t resort to long ball tactics throughout the 90 minutes…

Cheikyou Kouyate

What a player we have on our hands here. The Senegalese midfielder can run with the ball, pass the ball, win the ball and just about anything else you want a footballer to do with a ball. His performance against Spurs was a Man of the Match performance and, according to the man himself, he’s not even 100% fit yet. When he is, I think he has the potential to become a fan favourite and, dare I say it, an early contender for Hammer of the Year.

 

 

Attacking options

Believe it or not, we’ve actually got a pretty impressive strike force going on at the club at the moment. We caught a slight glimpse of World Cup sensation Enner Valencia against Spurs and he did more than enough to suggest he’s going to be a handful for defenders this season. And if his goal scoring exploits over the summer are anything to go by, we’ll know doubt see him on the scoresheet a few times as well.

Diafra Sakho is still an unknown quantity, but certainly a player to be excited about if his reputation in France can successfully translate over to English football.

Andy Carroll is still to come back, which I know some of you won’t be too excited about. But he’s a very good player on his day and one who can cause defenders a lot of problems when he’s fit.

Mauro Zarate is another player who’ll no doubt cause problems going forward, while Stewart Downing looks like he’s well up for providing the assists this season – but more on him in a bit.

Aaron Cresswell

A brilliant debut from the youngster and he’ll only get better as the games keep coming and he gets more experienced at this level.

He looks like he could turn out to be a bit of bargain and he made Allardyce’s new attacking style a lot easier to execute throughout the game.

He can create chances and he can defend, which is what you want from your defenders. More to come from him, I suspect.

Stewart Downing

He can a frustrating season last year, with a couple of injuries breaking up any consistency he could’ve built up.

But if he can stay fit and build on Saturday’s performance then he could get double figures in the assist chart and will no doubt chip in with a handful of goals.

He was dangerous and caused Spurs problems on a number of occasions. More of same over the season and he’ll have more luck against the weaker teams.

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