Team Focus: Bilic Finds Solutions Where Allardyce Failed Against Arsenal

After opening his West Ham United regime by claiming a spectacular three points at Arsenal, Slaven Bilic sought to close a special day by making a point of his own.

“Sam Allardyce left me a good team and left me some quality in the side,” the Croatian said to media about his predecessor. “We are still short of a few players but we have a chance to do a good job in the Premier League.”

It was a moment of magnanimity from Bilic, but he was also one of the few connected with West Ham offering good words to Allardyce on the day. The away fans were offering something else. By the time Mauro Zarate had added to Chekhou Kouyate’s opening goal to make it 2-0, they weren’t just mocking Arsenal. They were also mocking their old manager.

“Are you watching Allardyce?”

Well, he actually was, since he was sitting in a TV studio as a pundit for the game. It meant he had to analyse something that he never watched once during his four years as manager at the Boleyn Ground, and that wasn’t the expansive football that was for so long demanded by the fans.

Rather, it was West Ham finally getting a positive result off Arsenal, let alone just beating them.

The East London side’s losing sequence against Arsenal preceded Allardyce, but did become so much more pronounced under him, given he was responsible for six of those nine consecutive league defeats. It also cut against some of the cliches about Arsenal’s supposed susceptibility to that kind of abrasive style, and perhaps said more about the relative predictability of Allardyce’s football.

Arsene Wenger’s teams so easily outmanoeuvred it - and repeatedly.

While it would be wrong to make any deep conclusions from one match - and particularly those against the elite sides, given how they will always dominate the general play in such games, forcing the likes of West Ham to react - this victory did perhaps offer a few pointers as to what the Bilic regime will be like, and why it will be closer to fan expectations than Allardyce’s reductive pragmatism.

At their very best, Bilic teams combine a tight defensive cohesion with quick and intelligent attacking cohesion on the break. There’s a smart creativity about his play. This was the root of two very awkward Champions League qualifying legs for Arsenal against his Besiktas last year, and the base on which he built this win.

Much has been made of how Bilic also used those narrow defeats to work out exactly how to unravel Arsenal, but the wonder there is how Allardyce could not do the same in six.

Of course, it sometimes just takes a different perspective to see what needs to be changed, and there’s little doubt that’s what Bilic did. The stats emphasise this, when compared to the averages from the six games of Allardyce’s time.

Bilic made West Ham sleeker and more efficient, but not without his predecessor’s bite, if applied in other ways.

Let’s start from the back. What’s very conspicuous is the much higher number of tackles that Bilic’s West Ham made compared to the perceived robustness of Allardyce, with 22 compared to a previous average of 15.5. The Croatian’s outfit also offered fewer interceptions (12 against 15.5), as if better prepared to sit back, wait and then challenge. From there, they attacked much more incisively - and much more intelligently.

The biggest break from Allardyce’s games against Arsenal is, well, how they break. The old West Ham used to hit an average of over 22 crosses per game against Arsenal, in fairly futile fashion. On Sunday, that fell to just eight, and led to a much sharper attack. Although Bilic’s side had fewer shots, eight compared to 10.7, a higher proportion of those were on target at four against 3.2.

All those numbers added up to a performance in which West Ham never really looked in trouble of conceding, and opportunistically exposed Arsenal’s old problems.

Obviously, it’s very much open to question whether this can continue, especially since Bilic had the fortune of playing his first league game against a side he knew better than any other in the league and who themselves generally play with such a specific template.

The first signs were encouraging, though, and indicate that West Ham fans may themselves end up rather thankful.

What impressed you most about West Ham's performance against Arsenal? Let us know in the comments below