With The Hammers slipping towards the bottom of the Premier League, the supporters are demanding more of their key man.
It will come as a surprise to no one to learn that West Ham United have tallied the lowest shooting accuracy in the Premier League this season. You don’t score just 15 goals in 14 games, and find yourself three points off the bottom, with a reliable strike rate after all.
According to Opta, West Ham have managed to hit the target with just 30 per cent of their efforts on goal this season, a laughable statistic hardly helped by injuries to star strikers Andy Carroll and Diafra Sakho.
Then again, when you bring in three centre-forwards in the summer, Simone Zaza, Ashley Fletcher and Jonathan Calleri, it’s not unreasonable to expect at least one of them to locate the back of the net across a combined 883 minutes of Premier League action. It’s also not unreasonable to expect at least one of them to locate the back of the net when they’ve got the division’s most prolific chance creator bending to their will.
According to Squawka, Dimitri Payet has provided 42 key passes in 12 top flight games this season. Just for context, that’s nine ahead of Kevin De Bruyne, ten clear of Mesut Ozil and eleven in front of Roberto Firmino. However, while the aforementioned trio are the pride of their title chasing teams, Payet has suffered the brunt of the Irons’ ire in recent weeks.
It’s understandable, perhaps. When a team is performing so far below par, it’s only natural that fans look at the talisman and wonder why he’s not sprinkling his magic over dire displays. And, after inking a shiny new £125,000-per-week contract, the most lucrative deal in the club’s history according to the Daily Mail, working class fans are certainly within their rights to expect Payet to track runners now and again.
But what they cannot question is his ability to carve and create. Statistically, there’s no one better. The problem is, while Ozil has Sanchez, De Bruyne has Aguero and Firmino has Coutinho, Payet is supplying the bullets for the Premier League’s least productive strike force.
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