West Ham: No quick fix for Graham Potter as Hammers discover urgent transfer need
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Graham Potter’s curtain-raiser was precisely what West Ham hope to look back on and say of this season as a whole: a game of two halves. Life after the unpopular and uninspiring Julen Lopetegui began so promisingly, so ferociously, when Lucas Paqueta arrowed inches wide of the post after 40 seconds and then passed the opening goal into the net after nine minutes.
That early bravery abated, though, as Aston Villa flexed their European muscle against these once-Europa Conference League winners with a greatly improved second half in which West Ham looked to be hanging hopefully on. That is, of course, until Amadou Onana and Morgan Rogers scored inside five minutes of each other to dump West Ham out of the FA Cup.
If Potter’s front-four selection was unsurprising in that it matched that which Lopetegui selected at the Etihad last Saturday, it was certainly unexpected to see the way he set them up. Usually on the left, Crysencio Summerville was deployed on the right, where he combined with the more central Mohammed Kudus. Paqueta, who looked a new man, drifted infield as the nominal left winger.
That use of the old switcheroo dumbfounded Villa, who finally wrestled a foothold in the game after 15 minutes following a start to the game that was such a purple patch for West Ham that no one could earnestly have claimed they did not merit the ninth-minute lead Paqueta so nonchalantly gave them.
Potter will have purred adoringly from the sidelines at the way the ball was worked up the pitch, starting with Lukasz Fabianski in goal, then Max Kilman’s masterful ball over the top, and involving all of the front four, culminating in Summerville squaring and Paqueta rolling home. Potter clenched his fist and punched the air. Some start.
