Swansea 0-0 West Ham – A game of two halves with poor finishing throughout

Goalless throughout, Swansea and West Ham produced one of the strangest games of football the Barclays Premier League has seen all season. If you want a definition of the stereotypical ‘game of two halves’, this is it:

Key Stats:

The key statistic from this game is Swansea’s domination of possession. This is a dominance that we, watchers of the Premier League, are well accustomed to from Michael Laudrup‘s Swans side. However, Swansea dominated possession against West Ham and during their previous game against Kuban Krasnodar, neither have resulted in wins for the Welsh club.

Man of the Match:

For the second game on the trot, Chico, Swansea’s central-defender, was awarded with the Man of the Match award. This shows that the Spaniard had a lot to do throughout the game, it also suggests he did it very well. This is exactly why he was given our Man of the Match award. Michael Laudrup may also look into the fact that none of his attackers really had an impact on the game and as result left it up to Swansea’s defenders to make sure The Swans didn’t go down to a third home defeat of the season and managed to gain a point.

Chico’s clearances stood out as the most important attribute of his performance against The Hammers. He cleared the ball seven times, all seven times where in very important and potential dangerous areas of the pitch. Alongside Chico’s clearances, he also had a very high passing rate (87%) and made two important tackles.

Performance Score:

As you can see above, the Performance Score shows this was a ‘game of two halves’. West Ham overwhelmingly dominated the first-half, this is evidently shown by the fact The Hammers had 11 shots on goal. Much to Sam Allardyce’s annoyance, none of those 11 shots hit the back of the Swansea net.

When the score moves to the second half of the game, it shows Swansea on top. This is perfectly exemplified by the fact The Swans had 69% possession and 8 shots on goal. Quite how that dominance didn’t result in Swansea scoring at least once is beyond anybody and will be playing on Michael Laudrup’s mind for the next couple of days.

Key Observation:

With 10 attempts on goal and just like against Kuban, no win, Swansea fans will want to know how come there hasn’t been more goals from their side of late. One of the reasons is Swansea’s poor crossing. The Swans crossed the ball 23 times in total – only four of those crosses reached their target – a below par cross/success rate. This shows that Swansea may be able to pass the ball around between themselves consistently throughout games of football, but when it comes to putting the ball into the box and connecting with their attackers – The Swans find it much harder. This is a problem that will need addressing by Michael Laudrup if they are to continue to grow as a team.