West Ham put in another insipid performance as they were beaten 3-0 by Burnley at Turf Moor. It was a horror afternoon for the visitors- shambolic defending, listless in attack and injuries to skipper Mark Noble and influential playmaker Manuel Lanzini.
Most of the blame (and perhaps rightly so), will be laid at the feet of Fabian Balbuena and Roberto, but there were very few positives from this game. Pablo Fornals was anonymous, Sebastien Haller looked disinterested and even Declan Rice wasn’t at his best. Robert Snodgrass was again an honest worker, although it didn’t amount to much.
We were one of the few who had questioned Balbuena’s exclusion at the beginning of the season, but the Paraguayan now seems to be a pale shadow of the defender who formed one of the league’s best CB partnerships with Issa Diop last season. He was caught out of position time and again, and Burnley could’ve easily won this 5 or 6-0 on another day. There was one moment in the second half when he headed a Burnley cross out for a corner despite being under no pressure whatsoever- it was just him and Roberto near the ball when it came in, and the lack of confidence was telling. Angelo Ogbonna has his flaws, like Snodgrass, but if Balbuena continues to play like this, Pellegrini will have little choice but to restore the Italian to the first XI, and probably make the acquisition of a top class centre half his priority in January.
We’ve compiled player ratings from four different media publications (Telegraph, Mail, Mirror and FL) and averaged it.
Roberto was soundly criticised across all the papers, and had an average rating of 2.75. According to these ratings, Aaron Cresswell was the best starter, but it was a poor afternoon for the Hammers in general, with no player rated higher than 6 in any of the media outlets surveyed below.
West Ham combined player ratings vs Burnley GW12 2019/20
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