It’s now time to take an in-depth statistical look at West Ham United’s first home match of the 2018/2019 Premier League season and their first under Manuel Pellegrini, a 1-2 defeat to Eddie Howe’s AFC Bournemouth to forget in a hurry, as we crunch all the main match stats from the fairly even affair.
Possession
Like many of these team statistics, possession is an area that West Ham were able to drastically improve on from the opening 4-0 loss to Liverpool at Anfield, completely dominating it, which is a rare commodity for the Hammers.
Pellegrini’s men managed 60.9% possession to the Cherries’ 39.1%, which adds to the mystery of why the scoreline ended up how it did, the hosts managed more than enough possession to collect the three points, it will be very much back to the drawing board for the Irons, after this one.
Shots
As we move onto some attacking match facts, this is where we see much less of a gulf-in-class between the two teams, as they both dug out a similar number of shots in what was always going to be an attacking matchup.
In fact, the visitors edged out the hosts in this respect with 11 total shots to their 10, two of these were goals for the team from the South Coast while just one was for their opponents, this stat very much helps to tell the story of the match.
Shots On Target
After the blowing of the full-time whilst in East London, many claimed that the difference between Pellegrini and Howe’s boys was conviction in front of goal, but the shots on target figures suggest that they more or less matched each other in this respect.
For the East Londoners, exactly half of the shots they had were aimed directly at goal, 5 of 10, while the visitors came up with less than half, 5 out of 11, but the same number, this can only point to the Cherries’ strikers having a much better day than their positive numbers, being more accurate with their efforts on goal.
Pass Completion
Of all the statistics that stood out as woeful for West Ham at Anfield on Sunday, pass completion was one of their better ones, and that trend would follow on to the next weekend.
81.1 per cent of the players in Claret & Blue’s passes reached their intended targets, disproving the theory that sloppiness was to blame for their defeat, meanwhile, the victors didn’t pass near as well with 76.7, another positive for Pellegrini draw on in his post-mortem.
Key Passes
Our next statistic, key passes, shows the number of defence-splitting, match-winning moments of passing magic that the two sides’ playmakers produced over the course of the 90 minutes and offers clues as to why Howe’s men made it two wins from two.
Just one goal separated the Irons and the Boscombe team, as did just one key pass, Saturday’s hosts coming up with 11 and the side they were welcoming to London stadium, coming up with 12, one of them being Ryan Fraser’s excellent cross for the winner, the difference.
Corners
Corners can be key to gaining the upper hand in matches especially when your starting Xl has an aerial advantage over their opponents, much like West Ham did over Bournemouth on Saturday.
This stat goes to show how wasteful they were with them, the most part being cleared first-time after being taken by the likes of Robert Snodgrass and Felipe Anderson, creating nothing of note from their six, but then again, neither did the team with a 100% record this season from their four.
Clearances
The clearances statistic can serve as a clear indication of how hard one side made another’s defence work during a match, and which side’s defence better adapted to this workload.
The home side made just 16 clearances on home turf, while the visiting outfit managed just shy of double that figure with 31, showing how much better they dealt with attacks than the home side, Bournemouth were able to halt many more of West Ham’s attacks than vice-versa.
Saves
The two goalkeepers, Lukasz Fabianski and Asmir Begovic, were both set for busy afternoons when the teams they command from the back went head-to-head, and this proved to be the case.
The “saves made” statistic displays the fact that the latter of those names had the better day, putting to rest the demons of last Boxing day at the Vitality Stadium, recording four saves and only conceding one, whilst the Pole let two go past him, only stopping three shots.
So, now that all the stats have been well and truly crunched from the day where West Ham’s result meant they moved off the PL bottom spot and up to 19th in spite of defeat, will they be able to record better team statistics after facing Unai Emery’s Arsenal in North London next Saturday? Join us once again this time next week to find out.
