There have been some rotten halves of football served up by Leicester City this season but the opening period at the London Stadium was perhaps the first that left everybody questioning: ‘Does this team even want to stay up?’
It was shameful. The effort, urgency and fight required of a team battling the odds to survive was non-existent. It felt, from the stands, like they didn’t care.
It was only when Stephy Mavididi was introduced on the hour and hurriedly chased down Aaron Wan-Bissaka that City supporters were given a glimpse of the necessary intensity for a relegation battle. To that point, it had been lifeless.
They had not defended terribly in terms of the number of chances given up to West Ham, but that was perhaps only because they sat so deep and offered no forward thrust.
Still, they managed to concede twice, players standing motionless inside the box. In those moments, it was like West Ham were facing a team of mannequins.
The effort levels of the City players were a topic post-match but Ruud van Nistelrooy was insistent that his team are “giving everything” they have.
He surmised that the passive first-half performance was brought on by low confidence. Because of their form and their standing in the table, it’s difficult to have a positive mindset, and therefore difficult to play positive football.
In that case, he needs to somehow break them out of a cycle, because if bad results lead to a drop in confidence, and a drop in confidence leads to passive displays, and passive displays lead to bad results, then City are trapped in a spiral that ends with them falling into the Championship.
If low confidence is to blame, then van Nistelrooy’s decision to publicly disparage his own squad after the loss to Brentford looks bizarre, even if it was his honest opinion.
If a group of players are told by their own manager that every week they face a better team, and then they play like they know they’re inferior, that shouldn’t be too great of a surprise.
Perhaps it was a ploy by van Nistelrooy to fire his players up, to get them to go out there and prove him and show that they are good enough to stay in this division. If so, it’s massively backfired.
City have to give themselves something to protect
City have now failed to score in nine of their last 12 Premier League games. But in previous goalless matches, like those against Manchester City and Crystal Palace, they at least created good chances. They even had three decent opportunities against Brentford last week.
But van Nistelrooy was far too positive about the second-half display given City didn’t actually fashion a single decent opportunity. None of their 10 shots could even be classified as a half-chance.
West Ham were comfortable because they could be. It’s why starting well and scoring first is so important.
Leading 2-0, West Ham didn’t need to play expansively in the second half. They could protect what they had. So even with City improving, they did not look troubled.
City have scored the fewest first-half goals in the Premier League this season, with seven. They have scored the first goal five times in 27 matches, that’s three times fewer than any other side.
In only one of their last 13 Premier League fixtures have City scored first, away at Anfield against the best team in the country. In the other 12 games, they’ve conceded first. It’s no wonder they’re struggling when they keep giving teams headstarts.
The positive is that they at least did not fold at West Ham like they did against Brentford, Everton and Newcastle. But that is a minor positive given they didn’t ever actually look like getting back into the game.
Unless the first halves improve and they give themselves something to defend, they’re not going to collect enough points.
Buonanotte's individualism indicative of City woes
It was just Facundo Buonanotte’s fourth start in van Nistelrooy’s 14 Premier League games, which seems preposterous for a player who was City’s best outfielder prior to the manager’s arrival.
But having earned his chance with a bright showing off the bench against Brentford, he couldn’t replicate it against West Ham. If anything, his performance was indicative of City’s woes.
He looked like he was playing for himself, exacerbating the sense that City are a collection of 11 individuals and not a unit. But it wasn’t all his fault.
It wasn’t that he didn’t help the team out defensively. He did get back into his own box, failing to clear his lines properly for the first West Ham goal.
But on the ball, he tried to do it all himself. He knows how to weave in and out of tight spaces and is clearly exceptionally talented, but there are limits to his ability. He can not dribble past three players every time.
Such was City’s lack of endeavour in the first half, when Buonanotte did attempt to dribble forward, nobody supported him. He was inevitably crowded out and lost the ball every time.
But while he deserved to have team-mates around him, Buonanotte’s decision-making has to be questioned if he’s attempting these dribbles when he knows he’s heading into enemy territory alone.
Both Buonanotte’s decisions to go solo, and his team-mates’ lack of support for him, were poor reflections on City as a unit.
Van Nistelrooy not heeding his own words on subs
City played not to lose, not as if they were trying to win, van Nistelrooy said of the first half. But equally, could that be criticism of him too?
Even with their second-half improvements, they weren’t testing West Ham. They needed to do something different.
Van Nistelrooy made a pair of substitutions on the hour, but then didn’t make further changes until the 87th minute. Only then did he tweak how the team was set up.
It’s as if he’s scared to make a change to the formation that may cost City more goals and see them lose more heavily.
If he wants Patson Daka to try to change the game, he has to give him more than three minutes of normal time plus three minutes of added time.
In future scenarios like this, van Nistelrooy has to heed his own words, be bolder, and do something different earlier. He has to try to win.
Van Nistelrooy job looks safe even as fans lose faith
After 11 defeats in 12, questions over a manager’s future are likely. Fans are fast running out of faith in van Nistelrooy.
With every poor performance and bad result, the positives from the decent displays become less and less significant.
Asked how likely it was that he would be in charge to face Chelsea, van Nistelrooy didn’t seem to take kindly to the question.
He said: “What do you want me to say? I keep working, I keep going.”
Despite the results, it doesn’t seem like the Dutchman is under pressure. The coaching changes made over the past couple of weeks are a sign of support for him from the hierarchy.
But if he wants to regain support from the stands, he has to at least get his team to serve up performances where they look like they care as much as the fans do.
