West Ham United lost their second London derby to Mauricio Pochettino’s Tottenham Hotspur in the space of 11 days last night, a defeat that also saw Manuel Pellegrini’s men knocked out of the Carabao Cup at the Round Four stage. Today, we crunch all the statistics from what was an evenly-matched Halloween encounter under the lights.
Possession
The first team statistic we are going to be analysing, as is always the case in ‘Crunching The Statistics’ is the possession, a stat that was dominated by the visitors in the league meeting between these two a weekend ago.
The story was always going to be very much the same in East London, with Spurs enjoying the lion’s share or 55.1 per cent of the ball, to the Hammers’ 44.9%. But contrary to the Premier League clash at London Stadium, this is one of the few stats the Lilywhites comfortably beat their London rivals in.
Shots
When it comes to total shots on goal, we see a role-reversal take place, with Manuel Pellegrini’s men, who as we will find out later, created more on the night, well on top.
Without scoring more than once, they had 13 efforts on the Spurs goal that’s more than half of the amount managed by their opposition (six), but in this case, just why were the Irons the ones metaphorically packing their bags in the League Cup after full-time?
Shots On Target
The answer to the question posed at the end of the last team stat will be answered by our next one, the number of shots on target per team for the 96 minutes played on a spooky night for the Hammers at their home.
Just four, under a third, of Pellegrini’s men’s attempts were aimed directly at Paulo Gazzaniga’s goal, compare that to the five shots on target of the away side, of their six in total and we discover this was where the game was won. For the fourth match in succession, missed chances cost the Irons the result they desired.
Pass Completion
Our next team stat, percentage of passes completed or pass completion is one that offers us a clue as to the kind of game it was at the former Olympic Stadium, and it wasn’t the kind many were expecting.
With both teams averaging over 80% pass completion, 82.8% for West Ham and 86.4% for Tottenham, it was far from the dogged and scrappy London derbies of old. The quality of the two outfits on display made it a free-flowing and exciting matchup which, like this stat, was edged by the North Londoners.
Key Passes
Key passes are the flashes of brilliance that can set-up a goal from nowhere and change the game in an instant and there was no shortage of them in front of a crowd of 50,270 at London Stadium, a Hammers Carabao Cup record.
Despite just a couple of excellent moments in front of goal at key points in the match swaying proceedings in the Lilywhites’ favour, the Irons were the ones with more key passes, eight out of the ten on offer or 80%. The away side only needed a couple and only took a couple.
Corners
Another stat where the East Londoners came out on top convincingly without taking full advantage, a strong theme of the night, was corners won, which is the next team stat we will analyse.
Of the 14 times the form of set-piece was won by a player, on 11 of the occasions, the player was wearing Claret & Blue, he was wearing dark blue just three times. However, once again, Pochettino’s men were far more clinical in a game of two goals from corners, scoring every third corner, with the Irons averaging a strike every 11.
Clearances
Our final two statistics are measured of how much the two defences and two goalkeepers were worked and how successful they were in dealing with this workload. We start with the backlines and the clearances made stat.
It won’t be a surprise to learn that the home attack put the away defence under more pressure than vice-versa. This is evident by the mere seven clearances made by the hosts and the more than three times that number made by the visitors, 25.
Saves
And last but not least, it’s the turn of the two ‘keepers, cup shot-stopper for the Irons, Adrian San-Miguel, and usual third-choice star for the North London opponents, the aforementioned Gazzaniga.
Apart from picking the ball out of the net on three occasions, it was a relatively quiet evening for Adrian as he was forced into making saves twice, from a pair of long-range low efforts that were straight at him. Meanwhile, Gazzaniga had one more stop to make, the pick of his three being a phenomenal low save to keep out Angelo Ogbonna amid a goalmouth scramble in the second half.
So, now that all the key team statistics from the second renewing of the West Ham-Tottenham rivalry of the 2018/2019 season so far, both of which have been won by Spurs, have been well and truly crunched and analysed, will we be looking at yet more positive stats but a better result for the Hammers next time? Join us once again, then, to find out.
