The quality of West Ham United’s attacking play in victory over Wolverhampton Wanderers was exactly what manager David Moyes wanted to see from his forwards.
As the old adage goes, ‘the whole is greater than the sum of its parts’ and that certainly was the case for the Irons attack. Mohammed Kudus, Jarrod Bowen and Lucas Paquetá individually all performed expertly, leading to a complete showing in the 3-0 Premier League win.
Kudus struck in the first half with two fantastic finishes, before Bowen coolly slotted home in the second half. All three goals were provided by Paquetá passes.
The trio of goals meant three points on the board, leaving West Ham with just one loss in their last nine games and 20 wins from the last 32 played. It is a run of form that has Moyes very pleased with his side, but also looking for more as a busy festive schedule continues.
The boss was keen, however, to express his delight at how the trio of attackers interplayed, the work done pre-game to exploit potential Wolves weaknesses, and back-to-back clean-sheets in all competitions…
It was a great first half performance. especially in the way we got after Wolves early.
We’ve not often been able to do it after Thursday night games, which is something we’ve talked about a bit, and I thought we were more aggressive with everything we did in the first part of the game. It led to a couple of really good goals.
The quality of finishing was class.
There were not easy chances, they were really difficult finishes and they were brilliantly done by Mohammed Kudus and Jarrod Bowen. Lucas Paquetá got three assists today as well. The players we put in to give us the attacking threat really performed today.
I can’t take the credit for the homework done by our analysts [that Kudus had been told to aim inside the near post when cutting inside and shooting].
We are always looking for things that might help us and we thought shooting at the near post might give us a chance. We got two really good shots of from Mo, and Jarrod’s was a really good finish as well. The forward boys today produced.
It’s great that the players are all flexible, willing to try different things, and we’re getting good wins.
Late on in the game, Jarrod scored his goal today off the right wing. We put Paquetá in at centre-forward and Mo in behind him, and we wanted to see if we could try something different. We’d lost a little bit of impetus in the game and Wolves played much better in the second half.
We had a clean sheet in midweek and we got a clean-sheet today.
It was a little rocky for a while, 20 minutes in the second half, but we got through it and did okay.
We have to keep knocking at the door. I genuinely think that we can get better.
I think we can get better defensively. I think we’re beginning to show that we’ve got an attacking outlet. We’re slightly different at the moment and we’re experiencing a bit of a changing of the guard in some places. But we’re getting goals from all areas.
We’ve got a lot of things to do.
I don’t know when any of our players or I are going to get time to do our Christmas shopping! Maybe the Club shop might have something that I can give the wife!
Let’s be fair, we’ve got a really difficult patch of games to come, so I’m pleased to be going into it with a win and I hope we can stay close to the teams above us. We’re in a good position though and we’re happy with that.
