WHZ View: Three things we learned about West Ham in win v Aston Villa
West Ham maintained their fantastic start to 2021 with an emphatic 3-1 victory against Aston Villa on Wednesday night.
The Hammers dominated at Villa Park, running out comfortable winners thanks to Tomas Soucek’s eighth goal of the season and a brace from debutant Jesse Lingard.
The win made it eight out of nine since the turn of the year for David Moyes’ side. West Ham Zone picked out three things to take away from this excellent performance.
- Coufal’s a proper defender
In terms of value for money, Vladimir Coufal is arguably out best signing to date. With every passing performance, he makes the £5million price tag appear more of a steal.
Since his arrival, Coufal has played in 18 Premier League matches and helped keep five clean sheets.
The Czech pocketed Jack Grealish on his own patch. He made 16 recoveries, eight interceptions and won all four of his ariel duels [WyScout]. He didn’t give the England international a sniff.
Grealish was so frustrated he had to change wings to get involved in the game. He’ll be having nightmares for weeks about our number five.
2. Lingard completes the XI
For the majority of the season, David Moyes has stuck to the same group of players as good as he can. The one position he hasn’t yet settled on is the number ten role behind Antonio.
Lingard appears to have claimed that one. The attacker was a menace to Villa from the off, no West Ham player had more shots or touches in the final third in the first half. He took six attempts on goal in total, finding the net twice.
The England international completed 91% of his passes and 100% of crosses attempted in the match. All under the watchful eye of Gareth Southgate.
He becomes the first Hammer to score twice on his debut since Trevor Sinclair against Everton in 1998.
3. Change of mentality
It’s something Moyes has said time and time again in his interviews, you simply can’t deny the change at West Ham.
We were far from our best against Liverpool at the weekend. Last nights performance demonstrated again our ability to bounce back and perform at very high standards.
It’s not the first time we’ve shown this either. We fell behind early to Palace only to go and win 3-2. The same happened at Elland Road with Leeds. Even at home to Brighton when we were awful, we still took a point from the game.
Only four teams have lost fewer games than us now in the Premier League. We’re unrecognisable from 12 months ago.
In other West Ham news, here’s how the fans reacted to Jesse Lingard’s outstanding debut.