That was a horrible, horrible game to watch. Finally had a chance to sit down over lunch and write down my thoughts.
To be honest, up until Carroll's unbelievably good header from an equally unbelievably good cross (off Jenkinson's foot, that was heading straight into the stands, and it's curved round an unbelievable amount), West Ham had had plenty of ball, but we were the more dangerous. Bony had a chance to make it 2-0 and Sigurdsson had a chance parried away straight in between Bony and Routledge, if the angle of the save had been slightly different, either would have had a tap in! We were playing classic away team football. Absorb, not give anything easy, and then pounce.
But then Carroll scored from seemingly nothing. Bartley should have been man-marking him inside the box all game. Ash can't jump or compete with him (highlighted by the second goal), and neither could Rangel. So why was Williams marking Carroll from a corner? And why was Rangel left one-on-one in the air with Carroll? Additionally, why are Bony and Britton both marking the front post for their second goal? They didn't duff a corner to the front post all game, everything was looped to middle of the goal/back post for their big boys. Bony was in the right position, but Britton should have been on the post. You have to have people on the posts against West Ham. We paid for that, so I blame Monk for the second goal as he will have set up that defensive shape in training.
I got more and more frustrated during the second half that Monk wasn't doing anything. He had to change things. I'm getting sick of seeing Monk wait for bad things to happen to make changes, you must make changes to stop the bad stuff before it happens! West Ham were all over us and we were getting deeper and deeper. Montero should never have come off as, when he had the ball, he had the better of Jenkinson. Routledge was poor all game. My subs would have been:
1. Tiendalli for Rangel at 55 minutes - Jazz to RB and Tiendalli on at LB. Rangel had to come off. He wasn't getting roasted by a winger, but he constantly gave the ball away. He lost his bottle and whenever he was pressed, he gave it to them.
2. Dyer for Routledge at 60 minutes - Routledge was also having a shocker. The right hand side of our team was haemorrhaging possession and how Monk didn't see it and sort it is mind-boggling.
3. Shelvey for Sigurdsson at 70 minutes - Sigurdsson visibly tired later in the game, and I think Shelvey would have been a good option for the last 20 minutes further up field to get some energy back into our attack.
I'm disappointed that Monk basically showed me that he's not learning that quickly. You can't put your starting 11 out and expect them to eventually come good during the game. If it's not working or if players are playing poorly, you have to make changes to rectify the situation. Monk didn't do that yesterday. We didn't have a consistent plan for taking care of Carroll, and as a result, Carroll was able to find his own space without too much trouble. We should have been working out a specific routine for dealing with Carroll in the build up to the game, but it seemed that different people ended up marking Carroll at different times. We were using trial and error in the heat of battle and paid for it.
Anyway - this game isn't the make or break of our season! I wanted 7 points from 5 games starting with West Ham up until the half way stage of the season, so 2 wins against Villa and Hull and a draw against either Liverpool and Tottenham and it will still have been an incredibly good opening half of the season.