WHZ View: Resurgent Benrahma can hand West Ham all 3 points against Fulham
West Ham got back to winning ways against Aston Villa in mid-week but Saturday’s game against Fulham poses a different challenge.
Scott Parker’s side are in the relegation zone so will likely keep things tight at the back, so will not play as openly as Villa did.
That played into our hands on Wednesday, with Thomas Soucek and Jesse Lingard able to score after exploiting space in behind the defence.
Said Benrahma launched the counter-attack that led to Lingard’s first goal and he could be the key against Fulham.
The Frenchman also cut Villa open for Soucek’s opening goal, and that proved decisive in taking all three points.
The snapshot above shows the moment before Benrahma played the pass.
From that perspective it does not look like anything is on and yet seconds later Soucek runs through to score.
It took incredible vision and an ability to match for Benrahma to pull off the pass, and replicating that against Fulham will help us to another win.
The midfielder took a while to settle in but he is now up and running with two assists in his last four games – his first assist in claret came against Fulham too.
He knows his role well now and already has an effective understanding with Lingard.
One of his best attributes is his anticipation.
Against Doncaster, as seen above (WyScout), he quickly pounced on a loose ball and threaded a perfectly weighted ball through to Andriy Yarmolenko to score.
He sees things one step ahead of the opposition and that allows him to pull the strings in the middle of the park.
Against Villa we proved once again that we carry a threat through Lingard, Soucek and Michail Antonio – so it is not as though Fulham can just concentrate on stopping Benrahma.
That means he should have the freedom to find space and exploit the defence.
The image above shows Benrahma has more than one method to unsettle the opposition.
Not for the first time this season, he took up a wide position on the left.
We saw him do the same in the reverse fixture against Villa when he assisted Jarrod Bowen’s goal.
It allowed him to isolate the right-back Matty Cash, and his ability with both feet adds unpredictability to his play.
On this occasion he only had Antonio and Soucek to aim for, but he whipped in a low cross in a dangerous area that caused the defence problems – the ball eventually dropped to Vladimir Coufal who had a shot saved.
It will be interesting to see how David Moyes uses the 25-year-old against Fulham but we are confident he will pose problems wherever he plays.
In other West Ham news, ‘Done so well’ – Moyes names 3 West Ham players who have improved under him.