West Ham United slumped to a 2-0 defeat to Tottenham Hotspur in the Premier League on Sunday, meaning they have won just once in the top flight since Christmas, and David Moyes must surely be feeling the pressure with his team dropping into the relegation zone.
A goalless first half had West Ham still in the contest, while a win would have moved them out of the relegation zone, but goals from Emerson Royal and Heung-min Son shattered those ambitions and left Moyes with much to ponder.
Angelo Ogbonna had a game to forget, receiving a team-low Sofascore rating of just 6.1/10; while the Evening Standard’s Malik Ouzia was even more damning, giving him a rating of 4/10 due to his culpability in the two goals that the Irons conceded.
During his 81 minutes on the pitch, the Italian made just one tackle, two clearances and one interception while also taking 33 touches, only two more than goalkeeper Lukasz Fabianski.
The 35-year-old won just one aerial duel all day and generally had a game to forget, although fellow defender Vladimir Coufal also underperformed.
How did Coufal perform against Tottenham Hotspur?
Although given a slightly better rating than Ogbonna from both Sofascore and the Evening Standard’s Ouzia, with 6.8/10 and 5/10 respectively, the right-back still struggled to cope against Spurs.
He completed just 26 of his 50 attempted passes, proving quite wasteful in a game where circulating the ball effectively would have been key to securing a positive result, while he was also ineffective going forwards, succeeding with none of his seven crosses.
He did offer a physical presence, winning 80% of his ground duels and not being dribbled past once, but in losing possession a whopping 35 times, he clearly wasn’t confident on the ball during the match, and this proved costly.
His sloppiness in possession was surprising given his decent form of late, starring in the draw against Newcastle United (7.4 Sofascore rating) and the win over Everton (7.1 from Sofascore), but on a day when a win against Spurs would’ve taken the Irons out of the bottom three, his performance proved to be rather underwhelming.
It wasn’t only the Croatian who let Moyes down yesterday, with the defence as a whole failing to cope with Spurs’ attacks. However, Coufal and co will need to put things right at home to Nottingham Forest next weekend as the Hammers look to secure only their second league win of 2023.
