Manuel Pellegrini’s West Ham United moved off the Premier League bottom spot for the first time this season with an eye-catching 1-3 triumph over Marco Silva’s Everton at Goodison Park yesterday afternoon, climbing to 16th, join us to crunch all the key team statistics from the keenly-contested clash to reveal the secrets behind the crucial three points.
Possession
The first team statistic that we are going to analyse is possession, the amount of time that each side spends on the ball and it’s one that, unsurprisingly, was dominated by the hosts.
Silva’s men enjoyed 55.8 per cent possession, to Pellegrini’s side’s 44.2, which doesn’t match the scoreline in any way shape or form, although the home team is always expected to have better possession, this allowed the Hammers to counter-attack their opponents, to deadly effect.
Shots
The total shots stat offers us a bit more in terms of clues as to why the Irons were able to win by such a convincing margin, thus taking their first three points of the campaign home to East London.
However, the Toffees still managed to get off more efforts than they did, with 16, while the visitors registered nine, whilst it is easy to claim that the home side should have done better, considering they had seven more shots than the visitors, nine efforts away from home is an impressive number for any team, in this case, the Hammers.
Shots On Target
It is one thing getting plenty of attempts away at goal, but it is another making sure they are on target and troubling the defenders and the goalkeepers, something there was a clear gulf-in-class in on Merseyside.
The East Londoners were able to get almost half of their total efforts on target, which led to their three goals, which came courtesy of an Andriy Yarmolenko double and Marko Arnautovic strike, whereas, Everton could get just a quarter on target, they simply weren’t clinical enough in front of goal.
Pass Completion
The stats for pass completion, the percentage of each team’s passes which reached their intended targets, reveal that Sunday’s affair wasn’t the most free-flowing game the Premier League has ever seen.
Both sides failed to complete over 80 per cent of their targets, which means the passing on display wasn’t the greatest and is a clear area both managers can improve their teams, the hosts completing 77%, meanwhile, the away team could complete just 74.5%.
Key Passes
Key passes are the moments, the flashes of pure brilliance and creativity that can change a game, turn it on its head and there was no shortage of them in Liverpool, albeit not always with an end product attached.
Eight key passes each, for both the Toffees and the Hammers, show us that there could well have been more than the four goals that were scored on the day, the pick of them included a pair of balls from Pedro Obiang, who was heavily involved in two of the three visiting goals.
Corners
While there were plenty of key passes for the Goodison faithful to feast their eyes upon, what there wasn’t so many of was corners, which would have frustrated both outfits, given their aerial threat.
The hosts had double the amount that the visitors were able to win, with four to their two, though they were unable to utilise options such as centre-backs Kurt Zouma and Mason Holgate from these, the story was the same for the side from East London with Fabian Balbuena, Issa Diop and co.
Clearances
The final two stats that we always look at in “Crunching The Statistics” involve the amount of work that each defence and each goalkeeper was forced into carrying out, we start with clearances made.
Here, we see a staggering difference between the two teams, with Pellegrini’s men forced into making three times the amount (27) clearances than Everton were (9), once more, this matches the counter-attacking style of the Hammers, whose defence did excellently to ward off waves of Toffees attack, throughout the 90 minutes.
Saves
The two goalkeepers, despite the amount of goalmouth action seen in the match, weren’t overly worked as there were only four saves seen at Goodison Park, the majority of them being made by visiting shot-stopper Lukasz Fabianski.
The Polish International saved four of Everton’s efforts, the pick of them being a tricky stop to deny a volleyed Theo Walcott cross, which was mishit and almost ended up sneaking under the bar, the one bit of work Jordan Pickford had to deal with, aside from picking the ball out of his own net three times, was a Diop volley from a free-kick, that was aimed straight at him.
So, now that all the statistics from a rare afternoon of pure joy and elation for Pellegrini and West Ham as the veteran turned 65, have been well and truly crunched, will we have yet more positive stats to analyse come next Monday, after the league visit of Maurizio Sarri’s Chelsea to East London? Join us once more, then, to find out.
