Manuel Pellegrini’s West Ham United earnt a deserved first win of any kind since September 29 on Saturday when they hit Sean Dyche’s Burnley for four in a 4-2 Premier League triumph at London Stadium. Two days after the pivotal victory, we crunch all the statistics from the entertaining remembrance match, join us.
Possession
The first team stat we are going to be analysing, as is always the case in ‘Crunching The Stats,’ is possession, the amount of the ball that each team saw over the course of the 100 minutes that were played in East London.
While their possession stats have improved under Pellegrini, the Hammers still haven’t often dominated possession this season, although this clash was an anomaly as they totted up 62.8 per cent to the visitors’ 37.2%, home domination is a common theme of these stats.
Shots
When we move onto looking at number of shots attempted, the story of West Ham domination continues on an afternoon where the hosts should have killed off the game by half-time and really did do it the hard way, relying on two goals in the final ten minutes.
A staggering total of 22 shots helped them end a run of four matches in succession without a victory and score their fifth triumph of the season in total, their third at home. You have to take 16 efforts away to get the low total of six for Dyche’s men as they threatened the home goal few and far between.
Shots On Target
The clue as to why the Clarets were able to score twice and twice level the scores in a game they barely had a look in, in, lies in our next stat, involving the number of the attempts discussed in our last stat, that were on target.
Burnley were able to aim half, three of six, of their shots directly at Lukasz Fabianski’s net, scoring with two of them, Johann Berg Gudmundsson’s intricate first-half finish and Chris Wood’s late header. While the Irons couldn’t get half of their attempts on target, ten of 22, finding the back of the net with the same ratio.
Pass Completion
Playing against an opposition known for their knack of getting stuck and trying to bog down their opponents, the home side would have been so glad they could still play their free-flowing game, by achieving such a high pass completion rate.
Over 80%, 80.08%, of their passes reached their intended targets, while that figure is much lower for the Lancashire outfit and stands at an inferior 63.1%. As we’ll find out in our next stat, excellent passing was a key element of the East Londoners’ victory as they used it to endlessly cut open the opposition defence.
Key Passes
Key passes, our next team stat, are the flashes of brilliance that can change a game by slicing a backline in half and making a goal, and in an affair of six goals, there was no shortage of them at London Stadium.
Pellegrini’s men managed an eye-catching season-high of 17 key passes, but just one of them led to a goal, the brave ball of youngster Grady Diangana’s to Felipe Anderson to make the score 2-1. Whereas, Dyche’s men jotted up just five, scoring with one of theirs too, Ashley Westwood to Johann Berg Gudmundsson in the 45th minute.
Corners
Corners were always going to be a great area of interest when these two bottom-half sides met, giving the height in their respective ranks, and corner fans were not let down, with 14 on show.
The familiar trend carries on with a full 10 of them being created by West Ham, although they wasted all of them. Meanwhile, something you have to give Burnley credit for is how prolific they were with their chances, scoring with a Wood header from one of only four corners to equalise late on.
Clearances
As ever, the final two team stats are measures of how well the defences and goalkeepers of each team performed and how hard they were worked on a day where one backline had their backs to the walls for the majority and the other was given a watching brief.
No prizes for guessing which team had the higher workload at the back in terms of the clearances made stat, with the Clarets having to make nine more than the 25 of the Hammers, with neither defence covering themselves in glory during the high-scoring matchup.
Saves
And last but not least, it’s time to analyse the two shot-stoppers in our final stats, saves made. In the Irons goal was Polish International Fabianski and between the sticks at the other end was England legend and ex-Hammer Joe Hart.
On what was a very productive day in what has been an excellent season for him, in spite of conceding four times, Hart made five saves, the pick of them to deny the likes of Anderson and Marko Arnautovic from range. But, Fabianski was forced into just the one, which barely threatened his goal, very little activity for him apart from picking the ball out of his net twice, on Saturday.
So, now that all the very one-sided team stats from a third Premier League victory of the season for West Ham have been well and truly crunched, will we be analysing yet more positive figures for the Irons in seven days? After they’ve visited the John Smith’s Stadium and Huddersfield Town? Join us, once again, then, to find out.
