I'm sorry I don't want to be negative so early in the season, but that was so poor. Nowhere near good enough. Don't get me wrong we had bad luck with Zimmermann going off after a shocking challenge, and then West Ham scoring while he was still limping around within a few minutes of the tackle (though as I said earlier in the thread he shouldn't have started today). But if we'd have lost by 4 or 5 we couldn't have had any complaints. West Ham look a very good side don't get me wrong, but we aided them in every way possible. So disappointing after 3 good/encouraging performances we have to go into the 2 week break on the back of that.
I don't wanna focus on Zimmermann too much because you never know the injury might not be too bad and he might be back for Manchester City (though judging on what Farke has said about him leaving in crutches I doubt that),but I am really frustrated that he was chosen to play today. With Klose out for the season we simply cannot afford him to be injured between now and January, so why we're playing him when he's not fully fit and have an international break coming up is just mind-boggling to me. Put Amadou in, and if he has a shocker and we get thrashed so be it, we can recover from losing one game. What will be 100 times harder to recover from is if Zimbo is now out for a lengthy spell and we drop a considerable amount of points because Hanley isn't good enough. Thank God that injury to Godfrey in pre-season wasn't serious or we would be f*cked.
But yeah, all that happening didn't help. But in general we felt so disjointed today, which isn't something I've ever described this Farke team as being. Our midfield was far too lightweight (I would like to see Amadou come into it for Trybull but if we need him at centre back that might not be an option),and how many simple passes did we misplace today, with Buendia being by far and away the worst culprit. Last 2 games he just hasn't been there and it's so frustrating because he's got so much quality but I don't know what's wrong with him he just isn't using it. Hate to say it as well but Stiepermann just hasn't shown any evidence he's good enough at this level. 4 starts for him, 1 ok performance against Newcastle and 3 downright poor ones. What worries me as well is that Roberts isn't even making our bench. Is there something behind the scenes there? Because I don't know why he wouldn't even be named as a sub. Only bright side today was Krul, who made some fantastic saves and kept it being a cricket score. Jamal Lewis also impressive going forward.
Hate being so negative and realistically we are only 4 games into the season. This time last season we'd just been thrashed by Leeds and were sitting 17th in the Championship. We do have a habit under Farke of being better after the first international break, so I'm hopeful we can do that again this year. But yeah that was such a frustrating game on so many levels. After Manchester City we have Crystal Palace, Burnley and Villa. 3 games we have to pick up a good amount of points from. So let's pick ourselves up, dust ourselves down and go again after the break.