Written by @jackbailey27

Irons, with what’s been a very frustrating season, with that excellent 3-0 win over Southampton it is beginning to look like our premier league security is there for another year, now I know there is massive unrest with a lot of parts of the club and personally I am board out but in my heart of hearts I know they will not sell as in my opinion the reason they bought the club in the first place is that they saw us move into the ‘London Stadium’ and that is wouldn’t be cost effective for the taxpayer, allowing them to basically get it for free, which looks likely we will in the next few years.

 But the reason I am writing this article is because with the recent rumour of us looking to get a Director of football, I’d like to put out what I think would be good additions to what we currently have, but building a clubs way of playing. This may not sound all correct at the moment but listen to my reasoning. With the rumour of us targeting Eduardo Macia of Leicester City, I’d like to see West Ham built in a similar way Leicester have since winning the Premier League in 2016

 Since winning the league Leicester haven’t looked like they would be near the relegation zone except for Claudio Ranieri’s last few matches in charge but I’m more talking about their formation and the way they scout and choose players to buy. Leicester ever since coming back into the Premier league in 2014 have always played a 442, which although looks simple on paper has been cleverly put together for their team, making their team difficult to beat and when attacking look very capable to score multiple times.

 In Midfield is where I find it interesting as with a normal 442 the 2 central midfielders are normally box to box midfielders needing to both go forward and back, or one will hold and one will attack, but with Leicester they use a massively underrated player in Wilfred Ndidi who is comparable to N’golo Kante which every club would love to have in there squad, but they play him next to a technically excellent Vicente Ibbora and if you watch and of their games often Ndidi will win the ball back and instantly pass it to Iborra knowing that is the best option to attack, this variation of the 442 they have been using for 4 years, they brought Iborra last summer and Ndidi the winter before, so they are buying players for specific position which I believe West Ham just haven’t if you look at all our recent transfer windows.

 Where Leicester have a set formation that all Managers and Players all play and are all comfortable since Bilic come in and with Moyes we have had so many different formations and we still cannot find our best one. Now my opinion on this would be to pick one and stay with it! Don’t buy square pegs for round holes buy players specific for the specific positions, starting this summer, get the correct manager in (Howe or Silva in my opinion) get the Director of Football in and let them both consult each other about how they want to play, what players they are happy with/want to keep, what players they are happy to sell and then what type of players they need to certain positions.

So for example if the future manager and DOF wanted to play Leicester’s 442 with holding midfielders we could once again target Dendocker and Carvalho, hopefully with serious bids this time though.

Obviously it is a lot harder than just buying players and playing them but we need to give West Ham, our team a little but more of a playing identity, something with structure that the players will understand and work on week in week out, one that fans will be excited to come and watch and it will also entertain fans also.

COYI