West Ham 2019/20: Why their press has failed?

West Ham had a poor first half of the season under Manuel Pellegrini, where they only secured two wins in all competitions from late September to December. The Chilean was sacked after the loss against Leicester City, with David Moyes making a triumphant return to the Hammers.

Under the Scott, West Ham recorded two wins, two draws and four loss in their last eight games. The victories were from the first two games, against Bournemouth and Gillingham in the FA Cup. Now, in the Premier League, after 26 games, they are in the relegation zone, a point behind Aston Villa.

Recalling the ambitious signings in the summer, certainly West Ham’s position does not match the investments made. Two of their top three most valuable arrivals, Sébastian Haller (€40m) and Pablo Fornals (€28m) were made last summer and are yet to really deliver. The defensive issues had long been an issue and Pellegrini was unable to tackle it, so the Chilean’s departure was inevitable.

From a tactical point of view, the pressing of West Ham was one of their most urgent issues which had to be solved, as soon as possible. In this tactical analysis scout report, we will show you the pressing inefficiency of Moyes’ West Ham. It is an analysis that focuses on Moyes’ tactics.

PPDA & Compactness

Two seasons ago, in the 2017/18 campaign, Moyes once became the manager of West Ham. There are players he should be familiar with. Some of the key players are defenders Angelo Ogbonna, Aaron Cresswell, and Declan Rice. Captain Mark Noble and offensive players like Manuel Lanzini and Robert Snodgrass also trained with Moyes before.

To briefly sum up the problem, the major issue at West Ham was their pressing. It was the compactness which was complex as it consisted of collective and individual issues. We will break down these issues in the coming sections.

First, we will summarize the PPDA of West Ham over the last one month. As it reflected in the line graph below, it seemed their pressing intensity fluctuated a lot. However, if we exclude the game against Liverpool, West Ham’s PPDA ranged from 6.3 to 16.52.

However, their pressing efforts were not rewarded when we further dig into the statistics. In these games, only West Brom’s 0.76 xG was lower than one. For Sheffield United, Everton and Brighton, their xG was all over two (2.31; 2.19; 2.49), let alone Leicester and Liverpool.

Before our analysis, let us think: why do a team press?

The press is meaningless if they did not serve any defensive purposes. The objectives could be delaying attacks, disrupting the build-ups, or even denying an individual to receive the ball. But, what makes a good pressing tactic?