Midfield Enforcers and Wing Wizards
Part 3: Central and Wide Midfielders
Now we enter the meaty middle of our formation.
As I stated in the introduction post, our formation was decided based on the results of our voting. By this point a second striker was prioritised over an attacking midfielder (which would have resulted in a 4-5-1 type formation) This means our formation has frozen into a 4-4-2. The strikers will be revealed in the next post.
This post will be focusing on four players split into three positions (two central midfielders and a right and left winger).
Before I get into the actual players, I would like to say a little something about what I consider is ‘The West Ham way’. Whenever other fans mention this, or even most of the times it’s mentioned in the press, it’s said with an almost snide manner as if it’s some ludicrous aim of a smaller club aiming to play attractive football that is above our ability.
That is not the case.
For every great flair player we have had, we have always had grit to accompany it. The West Ham way isn’t so much a drive to play attacking football at all expenses, but rather a choice to play POSITIVE football, with an intention to play on the front foot even against bad circumstances. This is why the following positions and the players that fill them are critical to how we West Ham fans view our club philosophy.
CENTRAL MIDFIELDER
Personal Picks: Parker, Kouyate and Rice
Scott Parker. The absolute best English defensive midfielder I have ever seen. I was too young to have seen Billy Bonds play (too young as in not even conceived yet) but I have heard even older Hammers say Scotty Parker was Billy Bonds part 2.
An absolute leader on and off the pitch (it’s ludicrous to think that he was never officially our captain), he may have caught international interest only after he left us for Spurs, but any Hammer will tell you his peak years were with us.
He was already phenomenal as a workhorse and as a tackling machine, but he added flair and the occasional driving run forward to the goal, Parker was expected to be a complete engine for us. Remember, in the season that we were relegated, Parker took home the FWA Player of the Year award.
Let that sink in, a player from a team that finished bottom in the league took home the Player of the Year award, THAT was how good he was.
I love Declan Rice now too, and he has the potential to become a club legend for us, but we have not seen his prime yet, which is why I went with the box-to-box monster that was Cheikhou Kouyate. He may have gotten lazy towards his last season, but for a brief period, he was the perfect physical presence we needed.
And how did the others vote? Well, as expected, Super Scotty Parker won the first spot by a landslide. Of the 9 of us that took part in the voting, 8 of us had Parker as our #1 pick. The only 1 who didn’t was Anirudh, and it’s most probably because he became a fan after Parker had left (though I may be wrong about that haha). So with the biggest margin between a #1 and a #2 spot (30 points), Scott Parker is our first pick.
Interestingly, as proof of both his own meteoric rise in terms of talent and I guess our desperate need to have another academy graduate prove himself after such a long time, Declan Rice gets the second spot.
This is a really solid central midfield duo. With a pairing like this, it almost ensures none of the attacking players have to worry too much about losing the ball or about getting the ball back if they do. Between Scott’s energy and steely tackles and Rice’s reading of the game and the combination of the physicality they both bring as well as their never-say-die attitude and willingness to play the ball to more creative players, there is no better pairing for a steady midfield.
Other Votes – Though this was the most overwhelming win by a single player, this category also had the most number of players nominated in some capacity or the other. The 10 other players nominated were, again in order of their votes, Lampard (who missed out by 4 points for the 2nd spot), Kouyate with 3 points, Joe Cole, Downing, Carrick, Diame and Mark Noble with 2 points and Behrami, Collison and Hayden Mullins with a single point each
Interesting Tidbit – Even though Lampard missed out on a spot, he received 3 votes as opposed to 5 for Rice. He was voted higher consistently, all #2 spot, but missed out since Rice got 3 #3 votes, 1 #2 vote (from one of our senior voters, Ashok) and a #1 vote (by the aforementioned Anirudh)
LEFT MIDFIELDER/WINGER
Personal Picks: Payet, Felipe and Boa Morte
I was actually going to report the result for the Right Midfielder/Winger position first as per the order of how we voted, but since we’ve just finished one obvious pick, I figured we could finish up the other incredibly obvious pick.
Dimitri Payet. “Frog” “Snake”. There is plenty of vitriol that was spewed against him by a lot of West Ham fans, but damn it if they won’t also tell you he was probably the most talented player they’d seen put on a Claret and Blue jersey, at least one of the Top three of all time.
As an attacking playmaker, he was pretty much perfect.
Sublime ball control and dribbling skills. Check.
Otherworldly vision and exceptional passing ability. Check.
Ability to finish the ball when needed to. Check.
Extraordinary set-piece ability. Check.
If one wanted to nitpick, there is the criticism that he was maybe, at times a tad bit too mercurial. Payet was switched on way more often than off. In fact, I don’t actually remember him having more than 1-2 complete off days, since even on a bad day, he could pull off something magical, something game-changing, all in the blink of an eye.
Felipe Anderson is the current successor to his role, and he is a really good player on his day, but he’s still far too inconsistent to my liking and is nowhere near the playmaker Dimitri was.
I happen to remember Boa Morte in a much better light than most of my fellow fans, but I guess that was because he was the main winger when I first started watching, and we didn’t get as good a replacement for some time after that.
And again, as expected, a landslide victory for Dimitri Payet as he grabs the spot with 42 points, a whopping 27 point lead over the second-placed Felipe Anderson.
We may hate the guy for leaving the way he did, but it is obvious that he still holds a special place in our memories, if not our hearts. 11 goals and 18 assists in 48 PL appearances don’t show how important he was to us. Payet’s magic went beyond these statistics, the number of magical moments he gave us was countless. In a single season, he convinced all of us and quite a few others that we were capable of becoming legitimate contenders for a European spot and who knows, if he’d not had the problems he developed later on, he could’ve gone on to be one of the all-time Premier League greats. Ah, the what-ifs, the what-ifs.
Other Votes – Felipe’s second spot place is another indicator that only recent talents have really impressed and it is only given more credence when this position, the right wing position and the goalkeeper are the ones with the least number of nominated players. In fact, Etherington who comes third and the duo of Trevor Sinclair and Boa Morte who tie for fourth are the only other proper wingers nominated, with Masuaku and Lanzini rounding up the nominations
Interesting Tidbits – Only Adoksh‘s vote for Payet at #2 prevented him from getting a clean sweep of #1 votes and the largest landslide victory for a player, Adoksh’s first pick was Felipe and his 3rd was the same as mine in Boa Morte. Apparently Adoksh still hasn’t let his grudge against Payet slide completely haha. 😀
RIGHT MIDFIELDER/WINGER
Personal Picks: Downing, Diamanti and Antonio
I loved Stewart Downing. It’s a shame that when most people think of Downing all they think of is a stereotypical English winger when he showed for us, all too briefly, that he was capable of so much more.
In Big Sam’s final season, when Carroll and Nolan were both out with injury, he tried out a brand new 4-4-2 diamond formation with Downing at the attacking end and he absolutely shined for us.
I know that doesn’t qualify him for this position, but since I guessed (rightly) that he wasn’t going to have much of a chance in that vote, I’d at least nominate him for the other position he played when Big Sam abandoned the diamond for his usual 4-5-1 once his big two came back from injury. I truly believe if he hadn’t done that (especially since the diamond was still successful), the club would have finished higher and Sam would have probably even had a longer career at our helm.
Diamanti was another maverick talent who, though not quite as brilliant as Payet, was also another freekick specialist with an eye for the spectacular and Michail Antonio is a winger with power and speed that can be quite unbeatable on his day
This was the first position in which a player I didn’t vote for, won the poll, with 5 out of 9 voters all choosing him as their #1 pick, West ham Academy product Joe Cole gets the starting spot on the right-wing
One of the fabled Academy graduates of the early 2000s, Joe Cole was the precocious creative livewire of the bunch, a technically gifted winger with “skills of a Brazilian” (a quote by Pele, who knows a thing or two about Brazilian skills), and though he hit his prime with another London club, Chelsea after being a part of the team that got relegated in the 02-03 season (a team still considered by many to be the best team to ever get relegated from the Premier League), for close to four seasons he was a key part of the great hope West Ham promised, not only for our fans but also for the England national team. He returned a decade later to play a squad role for two further seasons before eventually finishing his career in the MLS last year.
It goes to show you how enormous his reputation was that even with an accomplished career including a trophy cabinet of 3 Premier League titles, 2 FA Cups and a Champions League runner-up medal, as well as being a part of the 05-06 PFA team of the year and being voted Chelsea’s player of the year in 07-08, he is still considered to have not lived up to the potential he showed in his early years with us.
Other Votes – Stewart Downing actually tied for second place with Yossi Benayoun, Antonio came in third, Diamanti fourth, Etherington fifth and Behrami sixth. Judging from these, even though the number of nominees is the same as the number of Left wingers nominated, the quality on the right wing was better throughout the years.
Interesting tidbits – Benayoun actually got the most number of nominations (6 out of 9), mostly in the second spot in the voter’s lists but the number of people who rated Cole and Downing highly was enough to get the first place and tie for second respectively
There we have it, our 4 midfield players.
A classic midfield consisting of 2 steely, selfless defensive players flanked by 2 creative wingers with dribbling skills as well as playmaking abilities, the great thing about this group is that it actually looks like everyone compliments the other.
Payet gets teamed up with his usual full-back partner in Cresswell while Zabaleta’s experience and professionalism will mesh well with Joe Cole’s youthful drive and if they ever do lose the ball, as stated before, Parker and Rice will either hunt it down or be in a position to intercept balls through the centre just to pass it back to them with as less fuss as possible.
- Our Best XI — Introduction
- Our Best XI 02 — Defense
- Our Best XI 04 — Forward