WHZ View: Fornals has an afternoon to forget with woeful performance v Man Utd
West Ham winger Pablo Fornals had an evening to forget as he turned in a poor performance against Manchester United on Saturday.
The Hammers took the lead in the first half through Tomas Soucek as the Irons gave their returning fans the perfect welcome home present.
The Red Devils turned the game around in the second half however as Paul Pogba, Mason Greenwood and Marcus Rashford’s goals secured a 3-1 win for the visitors.
Fornals was again chosen to start ahead of Said Benrahma but after Saturday’s performance, this may not be the case next weekend.
The Spaniard was wasteful in possession and missed a glorious chance to score for the Hammers.
In the first half, following an excellent run and cross from Jarrod Bowen, Fornals seemed to have a simple task in heading the ball past Dean Henderson.
But despite the perfect cross and his own excellent run Fornals couldn’t even hit the target.
The 24-year-old’s evening got worse from there and the stats prove just how off the pace Fornals was against Man United.
According to Wyscout, Fornals registered a 0% crossing accuracy and a 0% dribble success rate against the Red Devils before he was hooked off after 76 minutes.
Crossing and dribbling are key areas in which good wingers must excel and it was only Bowen who was pulling his weight according to these stats.
Bowen’s crossing accuracy was 50% as half of his crosses found a teammate, he also registered a 40% dribble success rate which, while not too impressive, is significantly better than what Fornals achieved.
Fornals only registered a 62% passing accuracy which is much less than his season average of 81.4% accuracy.
His passes were lazy and it was more a case of Fornals being poor than the Manchester United defenders doing well.
The Spaniard was also poor in his duels as he only won 19% of his total duels, failing to stop the away side playing out from the back.
Fornals also won 0% of his aerial duels which meant that any long balls from the back that were aimed towards him simply ended up with the Red Devils.
Overall, 68% of Fornals’ total actions were unsuccessful which isn’t good enough for a Premier League winger.
Fornals will have to make sure that his bad day at the office was a one-off with Benrahma looking for a way into the starting 11.
In other West Ham news, the Irons reportedly want to bring a former Tottenham attacker back to England.