[Adamstv]

Just need a consistent GK, Left back and CDM!

Bit unfair on Townsend who I think has improved game on game. Even Hoddle last night gave him praise. He was not my idea of a left back for the Prem but has got better.

[gazberg]

Bit unfair on Townsend who I think has improved game on game. Even Hoddle last night gave him praise. He was not my idea of a left back for the Prem but has got better.

Townsend has done better than i expected but hes still too inconsistent for me

[Albionic]

Move Periera to the middle and we get a benefit from that directly and you will see the Grady we expect return as well
It’s good to see the Livermore and Phillips issues addressed now let’s fix the middle please

[zippyandbungle]

I must admit, i am surprised Bilic has the backing he does. This is not me demanding his head by the way, i am just surprised given the stats and some very concerning performances so far this season, he still seems to have the support from the fans on the main.

I keep hearing how we are now more organised but lets face it, we have done so by sticking pretty much the whole team behind the ball and hoping we can nick something with some magic from either Pereira or Diangana who at the minute dont seem capable of doing that.

That is now 1 goal in 6 games. We can work hard and defend for our lives every game but there has to be a balance. I appreciate we have played Utd and Spurs. I appreciate Bilic has not been fully backed in the market but things have to improve and fast.

After next weekend, we would have played the 4 teams around us. At what point do you make a decision? Despite 2 committed performances, I cant help but feel we just dont look capable of winning a football match.

Anything other than a win next weekend and I dont see how you could argue with the board if they made the decision to part ways.

For some it’s not because he’s Bilic, it’s not what he has done....it’s the fact he isn’t  Pullis or Pardew.

[Albionic]

For some it’s not because he’s Bilic, it’s not what he has done....it’s the fact he isn’t  Pullis or Pardew.

The names and irrelevance it’s having a younger more dynamic attacking team wanting to perform hopefully some results will come too, that would be the icing on the cake for me.

[frazzle]

I firmly believe we need to keep Bilic to be successful. We should offer him an extended contract and regardless of what happens this season, for a change we should stick with the manager and see where we get to. Look at Norwich - did exactly what we did and got promoted ahead of time. They didnt stay up, granted, but they stuck with the manager and now building some form.

I dont think we are down by a long shot, there are some awful teams at the bottom with us and if we can just get some decent points from the next three then we are well in with a shout of staying up. And if we do that, with this squad and the amount of money spent, then Bilic will have done an outstanding job.

[alex1]

Why not? They cant play on reputation alone. We can play with Grant and Robinson as a front two for a start and play more into channels. We dont have to play Pereira and Diangana in order to succeed.

I thought Pereira had a good game v MU. Got on the ball alot in midfield and picked some good passes. I agree that he is wasted playing on the wing, but although on paper that's where he's down as playing, he was popping up all over the pitch. The commentator praised him as well. Maybe because he's not new, fans forget to notice the difference he makes.
Diangana has been off form, but with wingers you never know. If a move comes off, they are suddenly buzzing again. I think Billic is right to start him to see if anything comes off, because we know what he can do. There are certainly alot of West Ham fans and players who would disagree with anyone saying he's not worth the fee. And he's still very young. 

[wbastrollers]

I must say there are some very noticeable absentees from these boards since our brave effort against Man.U.

[alex1]

The usual poster who insistently calls for Bilic to be sacked is nowhere to be seen. Should tell you all you need to know. The players and staff can be proud of their performance this evening. They could not have done much more.

I'm more bothered that the decision makers at the club see what sort of performances we are putting in. That's why I posed the question some time back, who are the people who would ultimately make any decision on Billic's future. My concern is that if its just those in China, they are more likely to just take the results and league table at face value without seeing what else is happening. 

[smethwickw]

I don't agree - how are we inferior to Burnley and Sheff U?

We play better football than both who have Dinosaur managers.  I'm all for being realistic but let's not talk ourselves down too much!

We lack top flight experience. Burnley have plenty of that. There isn’t a huge amount of difference between us an Sheff Utd.

[tylerm]

We have improved every game this season-barring Fulham, but we desperately need a win from somewhere before someone else wins a couple of games. Beating Sheffield has got to be the game we win.

[baggie82]

We have improved every game this season-barring Fulham, but we desperately need a win from somewhere before someone else wins a couple of games. Beating Sheffield has got to be the game we win.

Huge game for both teams. Sheff Utd are more physical than we are but we play more football. Could go either way in reality. Let's hope we get the breaks that were missing at Old Trafford.

[Gilsey 56]

I firmly believe we need to keep Bilic to be successful. We should offer him an extended contract and regardless of what happens this season, for a change we should stick with the manager and see where we get to. Look at Norwich - did exactly what we did and got promoted ahead of time. They didnt stay up, granted, but they stuck with the manager and now building some form.

I dont think we are down by a long shot, there are some awful teams at the bottom with us and if we can just get some decent points from the next three then we are well in with a shout of staying up. And if we do that, with this squad and the amount of money spent, then Bilic will have done an outstanding job.

I couldn't agree more, he's getting everything out of these players.

[PartisanBaggie]

I must admit, i am surprised Bilic has the backing he does. This is not me demanding his head by the way, i am just surprised given the stats and some very concerning performances so far this season, he still seems to have the support from the fans on the main.

I keep hearing how we are now more organised but lets face it, we have done so by sticking pretty much the whole team behind the ball and hoping we can nick something with some magic from either Pereira or Diangana who at the minute dont seem capable of doing that.

That is now 1 goal in 6 games. We can work hard and defend for our lives every game but there has to be a balance. I appreciate we have played Utd and Spurs. I appreciate Bilic has not been fully backed in the market but things have to improve and fast.

After next weekend, we would have played the 4 teams around us. At what point do you make a decision? Despite 2 committed performances, I cant help but feel we just dont look capable of winning a football match.

Anything other than a win next weekend and I dont see how you could argue with the board if they made the decision to part ways.

Even if we lose to the Blades next weekend Jharmz some of our Bilić disciples on here would reward their Croat messiah with a new bumper contract! 😁

[timdon]

Even if we lose to the Blades next weekend Jharmz some of our Bilić disciples on here would reward their Croat messiah with a new bumper contract! 😁

And your point is what exactly? We are a work in progress and most of us understand that.  I can certainly see a lot of progress since Bilic became manager, in terms of personnel, in terms of style of play, and in terms of bringing down the average age of the woefully aging and stale squad he inherited. And yes, he is still a breath of fresh air compared to Pulis and Pardew. It is those who believe that there is some wonderful unemployed manager out there who can come in with a magic wand and transform us overnight who are deluded

[PartisanBaggie]

And your point is what exactly? We are a work in progress and most of us understand that.  I can certainly see a lot of progress since Bilic became manager, in terms of personnel, in terms of style of play, and in terms of bringing down the average age of the woefully aging and stale squad he inherited. And yes, he is still a breath of fresh air compared to Pulis and Pardew. It is those who believe that there is some wonderful unemployed manager out there who can come in with a magic wand and transform us overnight who are deluded

Er, my point is Tim you can’t see the wood for the trees!

Don’t know if you remember this but the attacking football came back under Darren Moore, Graeme Jones and Jimmy Shan. You know, the season before Bilić was actually appointed. Also, the age of the squad would most likely have come down regardless because as a club we’d clung onto our old guard for too long. A rebuild which met our budget was inevitable. Young and cheap was the only way we were heading.

Where’s Bilić’s magical wand gone Timmo?! I haven’t seen it since this time a year ago.

[chipperclark]

  Slav you have done a wonderful job with your hands tied behind your back (take note Furlong)LOL.

You have been limited with resources to keep the team up and you "CARE ABOUT" the team and supporters. I take my hat off to you.

The team has performed extremely well the last couple of games, and with poor refereeing and VAR to contend with.

[MarkW]

I was just flicking through Understat.clm and noticed a couple of things:

We are yet to outscore an opponent on xG, a measure of how many goals you'd expect given the quantity and quality of chances. The closest we came was 0.3 Vs Brighton's 0.55. To me this suggests we aren't creating gilt-edged chances.

The other thing which concerns me is that over all our league games, our xG is 4.49, i.e. it should be expected that we should have scored 4.49 goals. We've scored 6. There's a couple of ways to look at this, but to me it suggests Bilic hasn't found a system to generate regular, high percentage chances, and we've relied on variance (or luck) to score the number of goals we have. The rest of the bottom for are underperforming their xG, and given these things tend to regress towards the mean, it concerns me we haven't been able to address our lack of high success chance creation.

[Baggies]

I was just flicking through Understat.clm and noticed a couple of things:

We are yet to outscore an opponent on xG, a measure of how many goals you'd expect given the quantity and quality of chances. The closest we came was 0.3 Vs Brighton's 0.55. To me this suggests we aren't creating gilt-edged chances.

The other thing which concerns me is that over all our league games, our xG is 4.49, i.e. it should be expected that we should have scored 4.49 goals. We've scored 6. There's a couple of ways to look at this, but to me it suggests Bilic hasn't found a system to generate regular, high percentage chances, and we've relied on variance (or luck) to score the number of goals we have. The rest of the bottom for are underperforming their xG, and given these things tend to regress towards the mean, it concerns me we haven't been able to address our lack of high success chance creation.

You should bookmark this post really, because while many will dismiss it now, it is widely accepted that these stats are good long term performance indicators.

Bilic has generated a brilliant reaction these last 2 games and has earned a bit of wriggle room from that, but if the next game doesn't see a real change,l in performance levels, then you can safely assume we will finish bottom of the table without change at the top.

A lot of the Bilic love comes from 3 or 4 months of (veru impressive) honeymoon period football at the start of last season and ignore the shoddy performances that have been shown in the subsequent 12 months.

Lose next Saturday and we will be starting to look at that Derby County record. I don't want to go into the history books as one of the worst sides in top flight history.

[MarkW]

Thank you, Baggies.

I'm not Bilic Out, but not am I happy with how things are going. Our last two performances have supposed to be much better in terms of application, but our combined xG is only 1.24, yet our opponents have garnered 4.3. Sam Johnstone has played very well to limit the number of goals we have conceded, but the fact remains, based on the quantity and quality of chances in those games, we should have lost on aggregate by about 4-1, not 2-0.

Our xG is woeful on a game by game basis:

Leicester - 0.35
Everton - 0.32
Chelsea - 0.91
Southampton - 0.16 (Christ that is bad)
Burnley - 0.73
Brighton - 0.30
Fulham - 0.48
Spurs - 0.8
Manchester United - 0.44

There's no real upward trend, there's little to suggest we have a player who should be performing better than they are (in terms of chance creation or conversion). Kyle Bartley has our second highest xG behind Karlan Grant. That kind of tells you how poor things have been up front. And Bilic needs to see this and change something

[ABaggie]

XG is a pretty meaningless metric though. What would our xG have been if we had been given the penalty we should’ve had?

[MarkW]

XG is a pretty meaningless metric though. What would our xG have been if we had been given the penalty we should’ve had?

XG is meaningless? I'll go tell all the professional clubs using it...

A penalty is worth 0.76 xG so 1.2 for the game. But we didn't get the pen.

If Man Utd hadn't had theirs, their xG would have been above one still, indicating they ought to have still beaten us.

[Westie]

Yes, XG is an utterly useless statistic. A statistic for statistics sake. There would be more point in producing figures for the likelihood of players with different coloured boots scoring.

[MarkW]

Ok so let's be clear about a few things:

Speculating about a members nationality is absolutely no allowed in the context I've witnessed on this thread. Trying to fabricate reasons about why a member posts about what they do, and tying that to their nationality, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation or anything else is not tolerated on this forum.

On the flip side, if members can't debate without resorting to petty name-calling when they disagree, then posts will be removed and bans will follow. Doesn't matter if you have 10,000 posts or 10, the Forum rules are very clear and have never tolerated it.

[ABaggie]

XG is meaningless? I'll go tell all the professional clubs using it...

A penalty is worth 0.76 xG so 1.2 for the game. But we didn't get the pen.

If Man Utd hadn't had theirs, their xG would have been above one still, indicating they ought to have still beaten us.

So without changing anything about how we played our xG could’ve been 3 times higher than it was. As I said pretty meaningless