Metamorphosis

Remember the super hero Metamorphos? No? I can't blame you, the comic sucked but he stuck in my mind for one reason - he could totally change appearance in a split second. Pretty much as in The Incredible Hulk something huge could grow out of something quite ordinary. My problem as a 7 year old was - where do these new “qualities” come from?

West Ham will supposedly be going through a metamorphosis under new manager Zola and I find myself with the same confused feeling today.
His comment ”I only know one way to play: on the floor, attacking football, the way things should be done”, although slightly modified by the nervous official site into “Attacking football will dominate his philosophy” implicates a rather big change. But this metamorphosis, were will the new qualities come from?

I have a hard time accepting that a few desperate last minute signings and a new manager will transform this team to one capable of playing football with flair.

Someone may want to tell Mr Zola that there is a slight risk that Parker and Noble in central midfield will not suddenly start to produce brilliant attacking passes. We’ve seen them try, and there is a potential here but unfortunately they have not been able to do that very consistently.
On the wings Faubert and Ethers have on occasion tried to speed up the game, but charging along the flanks and curving into the box is probably not what Zola had in mind when he talked about “football on the floor”. For an on the floor passing game, they both unfortunately haven’t shown enough skill neither on the ball or when passing it. I do have hopes that Faubert will prove me wrong but Ethers passing, especially that last pass, will never be very good.
Also with Neill on the left back we have double problems. He is neither fast enough to overlap in attack, creating more options for a playmaker, nor is he fast enough to keep up with the other teams winger on the way back. Walter Lopez may be the aswer to this, but we are still to see him play.
Behrami seems to me to be better equipped for the offensive part of the game, at least in way of wanting to go forward, but seem almost as slow as Neill.
The moral here is that we’ll better not be playing teams that are good on the break since our wingers (and central midfield as well) will most likely keep losing the ball while our team is pushing up and we don’t have pace enough in the team to keep up on the return.

Do we have the qualities in the team to play the way Zola wants to? I doubt it.
But let’s hope that Zola can find a way to transform the players, maybe giving them the trust and confidence they need to attack, so we don’t have to stay the Bruce Banner of English football.
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