Huddersfield 1 - 4 West Ham (And Other Ramblings)

"Just a perfect day, problems all left alone, 

Weekenders on our own, it's such fun"

- Lou Reed, "Perfect Day"

And that will do very nicely indeed. 

In a season that seems to have been tinged with a sense of disappointment from the moment that we started the year with all the well drilled organisation of the Hawaiian Emergency Alert team, and then slammed shut the transfer window with a slightly incredulous "Is that it?", it must be said that in those brief, tantalising moments when things have been good, they've been almost perfect.

Mark Noble. His legs have gone. Literally, in this case. 

Two down to Spurs at Wembley and then roaring back to triumph 3-2; that thumping 3-0 win at Stoke; Chelsea kept at arms length and poked like a tiger for a 1-0 victory; the last gasp home winners against Swansea and West Brom that masked the inadequacy of what had gone before. All moments to remember and a reminder that when the stars align and the gods are with us, then West Ham can serve up great days just like anyone else.

And what was even better about this one was that it almost sprang from nowhere. After twenty minutes of this game it wouldn't have been a surprise if a great celestial hand had appeared from the clouds, picked up the John Smith's stadium, turned it upside down and shaken it, while yelling "IS THIS THING ON?".

It wasn't for a lack of effort on behalf of either side, but the stars weren't aligning for anybody. The home team huffed and puffed but never looked like causing us any damage, while we continually got Manuel Lanzini on the ball in dangerous positions, only for his radar to malfunction. Shades of that Hawaiian Emergency Alert team once again. Overall, I'm not sure I've seen so much effort produce so little of value since Madonna last starred in a film. 

In such circumstances, the tropes demand that you either need a moment of individual brilliance or catastrophic error to conjure up a goal. And so it was that Huddersfield keeper Jonas Lossl lined up a goal kick, noticed that all his defenders on the edge of the box were marked, and still passed it to the one of them anyway. This is a tactic which the Terriers have used regularly all season, and for all I know it could be a key component of why they have done so well. But in that moment, with the way that Lanzini, Arnautovic and Noble were aligned, it was fairly clear that we had set ourselves up with the expectation that they would try this, and thus just looked ludicrous.

So Lossl found Joe Lolley, Arnautovic hassled the young man, and Noble stole it from him and ran through to coolly bend it round the keeper for a barely deserved lead. It was an interesting passage of play because we had already forced Lossl to go long from goal kicks previously and won the ball back as a result. What I liked about this was that we were prepared for it and it worked so well it resulted in us scoring. I might be doing Bilic and his staff a disservice, but that feels like exactly the kind of attention to detail that was so frequently missing from his latter day teams. By contrast, whether it's towels on the sideline for long throws, or minimising the gaps between midfield and defence, you sense that there are no stones being left unturned by Moyes in the search for an edge. This goal would be Exhibit A for why that's a Very Good Thing.

***

"When I'm outside in a real good mood

You could almost forget 'bout all the other things"

- Kurt Vile and Courtney Barnett, "Over Everything"

It was at this point that I started to get a nagging sensation that I'd seen that goal somewhere before. I'm always hugely appreciative of opposition goalkeeping incompetence, as I often mention to my eldest daughter Barthez, and Lossl was definitely ringing some bells here. And then it came to me. 

Finn Harps. 

I shall say no more, but I shall simply invite you to watch this clip. Thirteen year old me nearly burst a blood vessel laughing at this the first time round. I think Lossl might have been channelling his inner Finn Harp here. 

***

"Are you hoping for a miracle?"
- Bloc Party, "Helicopter"

So with a one goal lead to protect and Huddersfield looking insipid, it felt very much to me like we could sit on that advantage and possibly snatch a second on the break. This is why my opinion should always be taken with a Super Sized pinch of salt.

Approaching half time, we were still playing disjointedly when Lolley picked up a loose ball wide on our left, cut into the box under minimal challenge and curled a sumptuous equaliser inside Adrian’s far post. The finishing in this game really deserved a better showcase – similar to when when you see a band you like on The Andrew Marr Show at nine on a Sunday morning and Chris Grayling is tapping his foot away on the sofa. If that was a goal from nothing, then it at least better reflected the balance of play in a game where neither side was really doing anything of note.

But if goals from nothing are your thing, then Marko Arnautovic seems to be your man. It took him just eleven seconds of the second half to latch on to a speculative Kouyate flick on, pull it out of the air, baffle Tommy Smith and drill home a fine low left footed shot. In that moment the entire Huddersfield team talk was consigned to the waste paper bin, and we could once again retain our shape and look to hit them on the break. It was a moment of sublime skill and a far more difficult finish that it looked at first glance.

Thereafter, we looked like we might score with every attack, as Huddersfield decided to give defending a miss and move to a "Rush Goalie" formation that I haven't seen since leaving school. We duly took advantage with a beautifully crafted first goal for Lanzini, which he finished smartly. He then helped himself to a second when Arnautovic went full "T-Rex out of the enclosure", leaving a trail of mangled bodies behind him until his strike partner arrived to smash home the loose ball like some glory hunting Velociraptor. The Austrian celebrated with all the relish of a dad who had just discovered his kids have changed the Sky Q pin.

Marko celebrates Lanzini's second

But here's the thing about Moyes' West Ham. We continue to win in very unlikely ways. Now hold on, because I know you might be spluttering at the mouth and wondering how I could possibly find fault with a 4-1 victory, so let me firstly say that I am not. This was a wonderful win. A perfect day. But let me sound a note of caution, because this is The H List after all, and you can go elsewhere for cheerleading if that's your thing.

As this shot map from Caley Graphics shows, while there wasn't much of a threat all day from Huddersfield while we displayed almost unheard levels of ruthlessness in our finishing. I was somewhat shocked when I saw the low xG of our chances, but that is kind of the point of xG - to remove the inherent biases of our own opinions. And so hats off to Noble, Arnautovic and Lanzini for their classy finishes. As it was, our best chance actually might have fallen to Kouyate who couldn't redirect an Ogbonna header just inches from the line, after a corner.

But the reason for my nagging concern is that we won't score four goals every week from six shots on target. We won't score last minute winners every week. We won't keep Chelsea quiet for 85 minutes every week. We won't have three shots to Spurs 31 and get a 1-1 draw every week. And if you think that is all just a load of overly negative shit, then ask yourself whether either of Bilic or Pardew were able to sustain their habit of going a goal down all the time and still winning. Regression to the mean is a bitch, yo.

And yet, with every passing fixture Moyes seems to conjure up ever more unlikely results. And here we are, with one defeat from our last eight fixtures and up to eleventh in the table. It is truly impressive what he has been able to achieve with a simple devotion to proper organisation and an ability to actually coach and improve players. I'm not yet ready to commit to Moyes on that long term deal, primarily because this sample size isn't anywhere near big enough, but also because I would like to see more of those wins like we had at Stoke. An impressive, dominant, no doubt about it, "Alexa beat these fuckers like a piñata", kind of a win.

Because, for all the excellence on display here, I'm not sure it's entirely sustainable in the long run to lean so heavily on keeping things tight and hoping that our midfielders cum forwards will conjure something up. And in fairness to Moyes, perhaps the best thing about this little resurgence is how underwhelmed he seems to be with it all. As if he can't quite get over how low the bar is in East London. He reckons we have a long way to go until we're close to the level he wants us at and I reckon he's right. That said, if the road is going to be long, then a few pleasant diversions such as this will go a long way toward easing the burden.

***

"Oh, but I was so much older then,
I'm younger than that now"

- Bob Dylan, "My Back Pages"

If the calling card of the Moyes regime has been his ability to rejuvenate players, then perhaps the shining example has been Mark Noble. I remain convinced that Noble was either injured or unfit at the start of the season, as it turns out that a 70 yard Croatian long jumper might not have been right at the cutting edge of elite athlete fitness preparation. Since his return to the side under Moyes he has been exemplary, and has done a marvellous job of thumbing his nose at unbelievers like me.

What I really noticed on Saturday was how much sharper he looked during the many short sprints that are the staple diet of the modern day Premier League midfielder. While Noble always has loads of time on the ball and always looks to retain possession in tight areas, I think he is also benefitting from the new system. With less ground to cover, he seemed more explosive and quicker over those short distances. His goal was a case in point, but generally I thought he did his work brilliantly and was the best player on the pitch, even allowing for the performances of Arnautovic and Lanzini.

I always think that laymen like me probably make far too much of formations. I strongly doubt whether professionals care too much about the concept of a 3-4-3 vs a 3-5-2, but instead focus simply on their tasks and the space on the pitch they are either supposed to attack or defend. Because ultimately, football is really just a game about space and trying to gain supremacy of it.

But if you divide the pitch up into five sections lengthwise, I think you can visualise why Noble seems to be better utilised in this system. None of this is an advanced tactical revelation, by the way, but instead just something I've been thinking about for a while.

If you look at the pitch in this way - and I stress again that I am not a qualified coach or the second coming of Ron Greenwood - I think it's easier to see that in this 4-2-3-1 formation you demand a lot of your central players. The two central midfielders have to laterally cover all five sections between them, unless the advanced three are hard workers and prepared to track back all day. Of course, if they are Dimitri Payet, Sofiane Feghouli and Manuel Lanzini then you might as well cast a couple of spells and get yourself a pet hippogriff to do it.

Similarly, the two centre backs need to be able to provide a solid, mobile base and allow the full backs to roam high up the pitch and try and get overloads out wide. We worked this pretty well in 2015-16 when Noble and Kouyate were imperious, and we had one of Europe's best players drawing all sorts of defensive cover on our left wing. With two mobile full backs, and a generally weak division, we were able to ride this formation all the way to the cusp of the Champions League.

But in the intervening years, the ravages of time and injuries have taken their toll. Certain players have visibly declined, and I counted Noble among them. But in this new system, there are some obvious advantages for him. Firstly, he can now park himself in the middle of that midfield three and have a greatly reduced amount of space to police. Now Obiang and Kouyate can drift out wide to provide support for those isolated wing backs. Noble, meanwhile, can sit in the middle and control possession against the weaker teams, and he did that here splendidly.

It helps, too, that he has a solid three behind him meaning that his backtracking should be reduced as well. There are flaws of course, and the wide areas continue to look a vulnerablity that we have seen repeatedly exposed, but as an overall platform it all seems pretty stable, although even as I write this all out, I feel like we might need to check that Zabaleta's legs are still attached given all that running he has to do.

I don't know how much weight any of that would carry with qualified coaches, but to my uneducated mind it makes some sense. That deep lying style allows us to compress the space well, and reduce the stress on older legs, but does also rely on the front men having to cover lots of ground ahead of them. In that sense, the renaissance of Arnautovic has relied as much upon his off the ball work as his goalscoring. Note that he was missing and Hernandez started at Wembley, when it looked like we couldn't have hurt them even with a Sherman tank. Which is kind of ironic given that Obiang unleashed a Howitzer to open the scoring.

As I mentioned above, I'm not entirely sure all of this is sustainable, but it feels very much like Moyes has cut his cloth to fit the players he has available to him. A better centre back and he might be able to revert to a back four, a better central midfield and he might be able to go to a pairing in there and push forward another body to help Arnautovic. Whatever he decides, I still think we need to some warm bodies this month.

***

"I am he as you are he as you are me

And we are all together"

- The Beatles, "I am the Walrus"

So for all of that praise directed towards Noble and the defensive shape of the team, the most eye catching piece of our performance was the front two of Lanzini and Arnautovic. By deploying them as a pair, Moyes continued his policy of slinging players into advanced positions when he doesn't trust them to do any tracking back, with Antonio being the first deployed in this manner.

Talking to a Newcastle supporting friend on Monday morning, he said something which made me laugh, but actually makes some sense. He said that we were using Arnautovic in a similar way to Ronaldo.

The Portuguese Arnautovic

After I stopped screwing up my face, I thought about it, and it's not quite as insane as it seems. It's insane, of course, but not as bad as, say, turning to Robert Snodgrass as the answer to your January problems.

Anyway, both Arnautovic and his Portuguese doppelgänger are tall, strong and quick wide forwards who have been converted into central strikers and both possess unusual gifts for someone in the position. Now let's get that into perspective - Ronaldo has almost refined the role of what a central striker looks like, so to compare him directly with a player in the bottom half of the Premier League after a good game away at Huddersfield would be well Tim Sherwood.

But what my friend was getting at, was more that we have abandoned the traditional demands of our strikers and are instead playing a very different way. Arnautovic is certainly strong enough to compete for balls and do the traditional grunt work of a striker, but where we really want to get him is isolated with defenders so he can run at them and beyond them. In a similar style to Ronaldo, if nowhere near the same level, we are asking him to use his physicality to lead counter attacks and stretch teams.

Take our last goal for example. That is not a goal that can be scored unless he has the pace, skill and power to get to the ball and then bulldoze into the area. None of our other players could have done that and it is a huge feather in the caps of Moyes and his coaching staff that they have engineered this development.

And yes, that third goal.

When did you last see us play like that? I can't remember a move of that ilk since the Carlton Cole screamer at Wigan, and while we played well in that 2015-16 season, we haven't mustered up anything that good since moving to the London Stadium. What was encouraging was that the goal actually showcased exactly what you want from a team in our situation. We pressed high, won the ball back, our midfielders shuffled it around until finding Arnautovic in space and a stepover later Lanzini was showing Chicharito what he's missing. A perfect goal on a perfect day.

***

"This is a tale of two city situations, a mutual appreciation 

Away from narrow preconception"

- Super Furry Animals, "Juxtaposed With U"

Which brings me to our transfer window. I'm not necessarily climbing the walls at the lack of activity, because the team's resurgence has lessened the threat of relegation considerably and if they can finish the month unbeaten we should be in full ascent up the side of Mt Mediocrity. An unheard of state of affairs when Brighton were pulling us to pieces all those weeks ago.

That being said, I think we need players still, but I'm starting to develop a weird, zen like faith in Moyes' ability to mine points from the most unpromising of situations. In the same way that when Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle came out and suddenly they could all fight like Neo from The Matrix without any explanation for it, I feel the same way about Moyes. I don't know what he's doing, or why it's happening but let's just go with it.

That West Ham back three

But the strangest rumour abounding about West Ham at the moment is the one linking Andy Carroll to Chelsea. When this emerged initially I assumed it was simply the sound of column inches being desperately filled or Carroll's agent angling for a new deal and overshooting the runway a little bit, but now it refuses to die down.

Like most Hammers fans I'd be prepared to drive him over there myself except I don't own an ambulance and I can't be doing with him pulling a hamstring turning over the radio when we hit traffic on the M25. I know plenty might keep him, but he's a disruptive force to the team purely because he confuses how we want to play. Send him West and let Conte sort that out, and if we get Batshuayi back in exchange then I could certainly live with that. Besides, the Champions League deserves to see Andy Carroll. They've had it too easy for too long, with their perfectly manicured pitches and slick passing football and now it's time for their Hawaiian Missile Warning. Here comes General Zod, Europe. Prepare to kneel.

Big Andy - Stick that up yer bleeding San Siro

But tragically, the other January tale that I seem to be hearing on repeat is the story of us trying to get Robert Snodgrass back from his loan spell. Not content with slagging him off for a year, and ignoring the not insignificant question about where he would play in this line up - it is really twisting my melon that after their fucking shambles of a transfer window this time last year, these dickheads have searched every inch of the globe, scanned YouTube into the wee hours and decided that the answer to their problems is.....the same guy that they signed last year and didn't know how to utilise. 

Never change West Ham. I love you. You're perfect. 

*I'm sorry this one was late and indeed was written as we were playing Shrewsbury. Life gets in the way sometimes. Still, chapeau Reece Burke. 

West Ham 2 - 0 Huddersfield (And Other Ramblings)

As a kid growing up, one of my favourite films was "Big Trouble in Little China". Being a boy from Essex, I'm pretty sure that the attraction revolved around being shown a world totally unlike anything I had ever even imagined before. Up until I saw Kim Cattrall battling the Wing Kong, I'm pretty sure the most exotic thing to have ever happened in Harold Hill was when my mate Danny's dad bought himself a new Fiat Uno and promptly crashed it into a skip.

The plot is bananas, featuring warring Chinese clans, mystical warlords, metaphysical battles and Kurt Russell running around in a tank top. I do not know what else you could possibly want from a film.

I would estimate I have seen it roughly 3,000 times.

The 1980's - rubbish for everything except movie posters and Alan Devonshire

One of the many running gags is the nice subversion of the movie trope of the time, whereby the all American hero (Russell) has to be constantly rescued and kept alive by his Chinese allies. During the course of all this they tell him that "China's got a lot of Hells". They then relay these to him at various points in the ludicrous plot to scare him. The list includes the Hell of Being Cut to Pieces, the Hell of Boiling Oil and the Hell of the Upside Down Sinners. 

To this list I would also like to add - The Hell of Having To Watch Slaven Bilic's West Ham play Must Win Games. 

***

By my estimation, this was the fifth such game that Bilic has faced since the start of last year. Hull, Burnley, Swansea and Spurs were all presented at the time as being of such great importance that should we have lost them, then Bilic would have been sacked. 

The ironic thing is that these games were mostly dreadful - Spurs excepted - but we won them all 1-0.  I'm almost tempted to say that perhaps Sullivan and Gold should make every game like this except for the fact that I'm not entirely convinced they wouldn't take that seriously, the crazy bastards.

Now, twenty fours hours on, I am still unsure exactly how I feel about this game. We won - WE WON - and you don't take that for granted these days as a Hammer. On the other hand, Huddersfield made West Brom look like AC Milan '94 so it's hard to gauge whether this chaotically oppressive performance was indicative of an improved ability to snuff out teams or just a lot of hard work to blow away an awful opponent.

Mostly though, I just want something to dream on. It's draining to always be stumbling from one self inflicted crisis to another, like the newest action hero of our time, Wayne Rooney - Uber Driver Man. And in the end, that's where I've landed. Let's enjoy that all too rare feeling of wandering out of a stadium and being able to excitedly discuss a win.

***

Individually, there were some cheery moments as Michail Antonio turned in the kind of performance to make you mutter "Michail, these men have families" under your breath as the Huddersfield back line were introduced to what I am reliably informed the kids call "Beast Mode".

Michail Antonio. What pace for a guy whose size sees goal kicks and free kicks directed at him too pic.twitter.com/omo7Op8RIF

— Colin Trainor (@colintrainor) September 12, 2017

Exhibit A M'Lud.

Whilst I have described this as the slowest West Ham team I've ever seen, that's not a charge that can be laid at the door of Antonio. He was the central cog of this performance, such as it was, transitioning us from unpromising midfield possessions to advanced territories with either outrageous strength and skill or just via jet fuelled bursts.

As tactically incoherent as I find us to be under Bilic, there doesn't seem to be much doubt that this is the best way to use Antonio. The bottled lightning he poured into our attacks looks to me to be exactly the kind of break that would best utilise Javier Hernandez, or would do if he wasn't wandering about on our left side like a horse who'd got confused and roamed out of his paddock.

What's interesting about that is that when I looked up Chicharito's heat map over at Sofascore.com he actually spent more time infield than it seemed at the game. I wonder if that's because he made several fruitless breaks inside looking for passes and flicks that never came, as we became overly fixated on smashing the ball towards Andy Carroll.

Either way, what is evident is that the Mexican is more defensively diligent than I gave him credit for, but in reality I'm not sure I wanted to find that out. I remain perplexed as to why a renowned, proven penalty box striker would not be the most advanced player on your team.

***

Behind all of this, we lined up with three at the back. I would say that this is really our best defensive alignment because it allows our slow, ageing and disorganised backline to individually only have to cover a smaller area of real estate. Jose Fonte, in particular, seems to thrive in this system and once again looked every inch the European Championship winning centre back that he actually is. Like, really, it's on Wikipedia and everything.

James Collins remains our sturdy umbrella, carried around for conditions such as these where the rain teemed down with such strength that it caused the game to look as though it was being played behind a shower door. On sunnier days, against better opponents who will move the ball with greater penetration he will probably be an unnecessary piece of kit, but here he was in his element.

But the issue with playing this way is that if you have three centre backs you really want at least one who is comfortable advancing with the ball at his feet, or distributing the ball forward with some alacrity. This isn't true of any of our four available centre back options. As such, teams can press heavily against our midfield players and then let our back line keep it, safe in the knowledge that at some point Collins is going to get bored and launch one in the general direction of Andy Carroll, whether he's on the pitch or not.

It also asks a huge amount of the wing backs, as they must perform their defensive duties whilst offering the width that won't be provided by a narrow midfield three. Here, Pablo Zabaleta confounded his critics (including me) by showing off a suitably lung busting capacity to do just that. Some of his forward raids were of the Blackadder-General Melchett-Goodbyeeeeee variety, but perhaps on a night like this he had correctly determined that a bit of headless running about might not be the worst thing in the world.

I see Zaba's gone again

Better teams will exploit those gaping holes behind our wing backs, but for this particular game it was fine as Huddersfield seemed content to keep it scoreless for a while and then rely on the Shitty Late Goal Syndrome to work its magic. As it was, they never threatened and as outrageously fortunate as Obiang's goal was, it felt like the least we deserved.

***

The Spaniard was partnered alongside Kouyate in the most mobile midfield pairing we can put out. They needed to be too, given that the full backs were charging forward like Scalextric cars when your nan has a go at them on Christmas. With Mark Noble mysteriously absent, there was a noticeable increase in mobility but a decrease in actual meaningful passing through that area, not helped by the back three going aerial more often than not. 

Kouyate was somewhat anonymous, getting about the field well but failing to really impose himself on the game as we know he can. I suspect that the lack of play through the middle made it tough for him to get into the game. Obiang, by contrast, got on the ball a lot more but found it equally as difficult to pick passes to get us moving. For all those who want Noble out of the team, tonight was a salutary reminder that central midfielders who can pass and carry the ball aren't to be dismissed lightly. 

It's also worth mentioning that a number of this team were returning from injury. As is customary, the line up resembled a rehabilitation centre as Reid, Obiang, Kouyate, Antonio and Carroll all got minutes under their belt after disrupted pre seasons. It's probably not an unrelated point that because our pre season work seems so amateurish we end up with players trying to get up to Premier League speed during competitive fixtures. 

We tend to eschew the money making tours to the Far East and US but if nothing else, playing a higher standard of opposition before the season starts might get the players a bit sharper. Each of the last two seasons have been characterised by this failing. 

***

So, that's a lot of tactical chat but what of the match? Well it was a scrappy, nervy, tentative affair which seems like a predictable by product of deeming a game a "must win" affair and telling the world that the managers position was "under review" and then having the maddest transfer window possible.

For all that Huddersfield were disappointing. Set up to contain, they did this moderately well for an hour although we went close in the first half when Kouyate narrowly failed to convert a Carroll cross-shot, and Hernandez hit the bar after some more Antonio bullying of the Terriers back line.

But we look a team bereft of confidence and ideas. Our 3-4-3 line up stifled any forward progress from the visitors, but led to some confused attacking patterns too. I would describe us as a footballing Rubik's Cube just now. Whenever Bilic puts something right within the team, he is doing so at the expense of somewhere else.

So the defence was shored up, but the midfield weakened. Perhaps this was precisely why William Carvalho was targeted so strongly. On nights like this he would have been our key player. Shorn of Lanzini and Arnautovic we lacked creativity and guile, but made up for it with a willingness to smash the ball long and play through the driving rain. Say what you will about Bilic, but he keeps winning these games and his team, by and large, continues to play for him.

If Zabaleta truly can play at wing back then that opens up another set of tactical possibilities, and if Antonio plays like that for the rest of the year then he will win plenty of points on his own. But, and you knew this was coming - there are some fairly significant problems in there too.

***

Despite the win, and all the good stuff mentioned so far, I still found this a fairly baffling performance. Most of this revolves around one player - the pissed Geordie elephant in the room - Andy Carroll.

Bilic hitched his wagon to that particular star many moons ago. The beginning of his falling out with Diafra Sakho was when he dropped him for Carroll in the 15/16 season despite Sakho being at the heart of all those famous early wins.

Like many before him, he was suckered in by the siren song of a player who would be worth building a team around if he could ever stay fit and this was a different team. Because of Carroll's persistent injuries it's not possible to set a team up to play completely to his strengths and so we have a curious halfway house. The 15/16 team was flying with an attacking game plan built around giving it to Payet at every available opportunity, and putting pacy mobile forwards in front of him to either create space or latch on to the inevitable inch perfect pass.

This worked splendidly for a long time, and carried on after Carroll was inserted into the team even if he looked as uncomfortable with that style of play as an Australian in a library. But the house of cards couldn't survive the hurricane that was the 2016/17 season. Carroll played in that same system once more, but those other pacy forwards were gone and soon, so too was Payet.

That left us with a team designed to play one way, with a centre forward very obviously suited to another way. There were moments of excellence - we'll always have Boro away - but most of the time, the disconnect between a midfield trying to play a style suited to galloping, mobile forwards floundered as they discovered that they were actually playing with the Angel of the North.

All of which leads me to the question that all of us were asking after last night - what is the plan for Javier Hernandez? Here he was a nominal left sided forward but got about a bit, but rarely into the box. This last bit is crucial, as the entire reason we signed him is his ability to snaffle goals from nothing. Here he was shunted wide and asked to try and link with Carroll. It did not work.

Presumably Arnautovic will replace him on Saturday, and with Antonio rolling on the other side that leaves a straight choice between Hernandez and Carroll as the solitary striker. Ironically, both might better as a pair, but that too is an impossibility because that would give deeper defensive responsibilities to Antonio and Arnautovic which is the sort of thing to give a man Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

Quite where Lanzini fits into any of that is beyond me. Can he play as part of a solitary midfield two? Can Steve Parish rap? Sure, but I don't imagine anyone thinks it will end well.

Steve Parish is every drunk uncle at a wedding. pic.twitter.com/1OjewHxdqe

— Andy Ha (@_AndyHa) September 12, 2017

Now, having too many good players isn't a bad thing. In fact, I'd argue that the squad as currently constructed is too thin but does have quite a decent level of consistency across the personnel. The drop off from first teamer to their replacement is generally minimal but it's a problem that some of them don't really have a replacement.

But bigger still is this issue of style. Are we a team who like to play 4-2-3-1 or 3-4-3? I don't really know what Bilic wants, and whilst there is value in versatility and tactical flexibility, there is more value in your players having some sort of consistent idea about what you want them to do. We won this game by winding up Carroll like a clockwork rhino and letting him loose against a defence who hadn't seen it before. The idea that will work against West Brom or Spurs seems fanciful to me.

To my mind, the answer seems to obviously be that Carroll should be an impact sub, meaning that when he gets injured the disruption is minimal. This hybrid solution of setting the team up to play without him and then just sticking him into the team anyway...well, that way relegation lies.

***

All of which suggests that our optimal line up has Hernandez leading the line. I think that's defensible but only in a world where we play with Lanzini close to him, and in a way that allows Arnautovic and Antonio to join quickly from wide positions. Maybe that's possible but it feels like a long way from where we are. The greatest irony of all is that our most flexible and adaptable striker is probably Sakho, but he seems destined to remain on the naughty step for the rest of his time here. 

One name I haven't mentioned is Andre Ayew who actually changed this game. Most were unhappy with Hernandez going off, but that's the reality with so much invested in Carroll. Instead it paid dividends as Obiang fluked one off a defender and then Ayew tapped a second in from a corner, on the line. I have struggled to define Ayew as a player but his predominant and obvious skill is the ability to score goals. Looking solely at time on the pitch, he is scoring a goal for us once every 224 minutes. That amounts to a goal every two and a half games. Not bad for a player who may or may not exist in this dimension. 

In all the permutations I ran through above, it never once occurred to me to put Ayew into the team, and yet the man has an undeniable something whereby he continues to contribute even when he's not playing well. This feels like something that will be very useful at West Ham.

***

And where does all of this leave Bilic? Everywhere and nowhere, baby. The cynic in me suggests that this will just perpetuate his death of a thousand cuts, as this win staves off the axe for another few games until the next time. It's never far away because our form, fitness, confidence and tactics just don't lend themselves to consistent performance. 

As an example, I can't even hazard a guess at the team on Saturday, for a game against a West Brom team who aren't very good but were 4-0 up in an hour in the corresponding fixture last year. 

So this win doesn't really change anything. If you were a fan before then you'll have been pleased at the obvious togetherness on the field, and are probably of the belief that the securing of the three points overrides all else. Win, get the points, build from there. I'd have some sympathy for that it wasn't for the fact I've heard that at least four times before. 

I keep waiting for the building bit. 

For those, like me, who advocate change then I'm not sure this will have moved the needle either. A disjointed, confusing performance that led to a thoroughly deserved, basically dominant win isn't the easiest thing to process. It's kind of like that time Johnny Depp appeared in the Vicar of Dibley. I just don't know what to do with the information.

Another three up top configuration I don't understand

I'll tell you what though. These games are painful. The constant strain of going into that stadium, a stadium where it already requires a massive effort just to get any atmosphere into the place, and having to watch these knife edge encounters is debilitating. Whatever the circumstances of the 2015/16 season, it was joyful because everybody had the shackles off. 

For Bilic to survive he needs to recapture some of that. I don't think he's going to do it without a better plan than he had here. But in the moment, here and now, that matters not. A win is a win is a win. I'd just as soon not return to Hell any time soon though.