Manuel Pellegrini’s West Ham United put eight goals past Mark Yates’ Macclesfield Town in the Carabao Cup Third Round at the London Stadium yesterday evening, on their way to their biggest winning margin in 35 years. Join us to crunch all of the key team statistics from the tactical and statistical mismatch of an affair.
Possession
When a team wins a game by such an outrageous margin, they have to have seen a fair deal of the ball, throughout, and this was exactly the way things panned out in East London.
Staggeringly, the Hammers absolutely bossed the possession with a remarkable 76 per-cent, the rock-bottom-of-the-Football-League visitors could only manage a measly 24%, the only real time they saw much of the ball was desperately trying to keep it at the back or on a rare counter-attack.
Shots
When it comes to the shots attempted, the story is very much the same and from the point of view of any other lower league team in this competition, it hides a terrifying truth.
The figures reveal that West Ham had 21 shots, meaning that they could have quite easily built on their eight goals and beaten their record victory of 10-0 over Bury, the away side couldn’t even manage a quarter of that number, managing just five.
Shots On Target
The reasons to be excited for members of the Claret & Blue Army continue as we look at how many of those 26 overall shots were on target, forcing intervention from a goalkeeper or a last-man-defender.
Impressively, over half of the Hammers’ efforts were on target, 12 of the 21, more evidence that it could have been more, while to their credit, Macclesfield were able to sign for two shots on target, one of which troubled Adrian-san-Miguel, in the first half.
Fouls Committed
Fouls committed is a stat that reveals how free-flowing a match was by looking at the number of stoppages for free-kicks, that have stemmed from fouls committed by players from both teams.
It is also a rare area from the tie which sees the Hammers and the Silkmen tied, both sides committed four fouls, it was far from a stop-start match in Stratford, allowing the Irons plenty of time to get forward and pass the ball around, the foundation from which they built their dominance.
Key Passes
If there was a shortage of fouls at the former London 2012 Olympic Stadium, there certainly wasn’t a shortage of key passes, in relative terms, with a total of seven being made.
It is no surprise to see that all of these were made by the home team, as Pellegrini’s men cut open the Town defence time and time again, an excellent example of this is substitute Joe Powell’s eye-catching through-ball to assist the eighth goal of the evening, which was scored by fellow youngster Grady Diangana.
Corners
The unsurprising one-sided nature of what we have found so far in our statistical analysis does not end when we look at corners won, with one team doing 99% of the attacking, over the course of the 90 minutes.
All of the 13 corners on display fell the way of the boys in Claret & Blue and they made the most of them, too, utilising their aerial advantage, Angelo Ogbonna heading home from one in the second half. Macclesfield had plenty of height in their team, it will disappoint them that they didn’t even come close to showcasing this from the form of a set-piece.
Clearances
The final two stats that we are going to look at are measures of an outfit’s defence and goalkeeper, and there are no prizes for guessing which was tested out more on a mild evening in the capital.
There weren’t too many clearances to be made as the Silkmen often couldn’t contain the Irons’ attack, only getting rid of the danger by clearing the ball on eight occasions, while a clearance was only made once, in the opposite box, the one Macclesfield were attacking.
Saves
Last, but not least, is the saves made stat, a measure of the two goalkeepers, Adrian and Manchester United loanee Kieran O’Hara, who has now conceded 12 goals in his two trips to London Stadium, the other one being with his parent club’s U23s, last season.
In many ways, O’Hara was the man who stopped the hosts from claiming their biggest-ever win, or at least, equalling their record, with the four saves that he made. Adrian needed only to stop half that number, one in the first half from Harry Smith and then, the easier, a tame shot from veteran Danny Whitaker, after the break.
So, now that all the crucial team statistics have been well and truly crunched from a night that no West Ham player on show will forget, regardless of where their career takes them, will we have yet more encouraging stats to reflect on come Monday? After Jose Mourinho’s Red Devils have clashed with Pellegrini’s men in the Premier League? Join us once again, then, to find out.
