WHZ View: 3 reasons why West Ham are the surprise package in PL this season
David Moyes will be very happy with the progress made by his West Ham side since his return to the club 14 months ago.
The Hammers currently occupy the last Champions League space in the top-flight. They’ve won 13 of their 26 league matches overall, picking up 23 from a possible 30 points in 2021.
According to Squakwa, West Ham are the surprise package of this Premier League season:
“Moyes finally has his career back on track in his second spell at West Ham,” they said.
“The Scotsman helped the Hammers remain in the Premier League with a 16th-placed finish after taking over from Manuel Pellegrini last season, before turning them into genuine contenders for European football.”
It’s fair to say we’ve certainly gone above and beyond this campaign. West Ham Zone have looked at three reasons why we’ve become the surprise package this season.
Sharp-set-plays
We have serious attacking threat from our set-pieces this season. Tomas Soucek, Angelo Ogbonna, Michail Antonio, Craig Dawson and Issa Diop have all scored for us from freekicks or corners.
Overall, we’ve found the net 13 times from set-plays, the most in the top-flight [WhoScored]. The delivery of Aaron Cresswell has contributed massively, he’s got eight assists so far this season.
We’re also much better at defending them too. Our record of five goals conceded from corners and freekicks is the third-best in the division. We’re tactically sound in this department.
Czech mates
Soucek and Vladimir Coufal have come in and changed the mentality of the club.
The two of them are absolute warriors. Soucek is our top-scorer with eight goals and performed heroics against Spurs when he played on despite a nasty head injury. He went off the pitch to get stitches but came back to play the full 90.
Coufal has also been great for the club, he’s a born winner. You only have to look at his body language after the City game to see how dejected he was. This season, he’s pocketed Ferran Torres, Raheem Sterling, both Wilfried Zaha and Jack Grealish (twice) just to name a few.
Reliable Rice
You can’t build a successful team if you have to continuously make changes. Moyes has built his team around one man and is reaping the rewards.
Declan Rice has now played 65 consecutive Premier League games for the Hammers, completing 90 minutes every single time. As skipper, he’s led us to 4th in the table. He’s made the most interceptions at the club with 140, and a passing accuracy of 89.3% [WyScout].
Now a full England international, he looks certain to start for the Three Lions this summer at the European championships. It’s probably wise to sign him down to a big-money, long term deal before this, though.
In other West Ham news, ahead of our clash on Monday, we looked back at the last time we hosted Leeds in the top-flight.