Swansea 3 West Ham 0 | Match Stats & Goal Analysis

Swansea appeared to ease past promoted West Ham in last Saturday’s lunchtime kick-off at the Liberty Stadium, but what really happened? Here’s my match report.

The game actually started very well for West Ham, very bright, active, attacking well, and put Swansea under pressure early on, but defensive errors cost the Hammers, this was a common theme throughout the game.

The First Goal

Swansea were on the attack, and the ball is out to the far right to Rangel who travelled to the byline and put in a low ball, close to Jaaskelainen’s near post, he dived to far, and it squeezed in under him.

What Swansea were able to do was make their chances count. They were far more clinical that West Ham, and this showed in the stats. Swansea amassed 12 shots in the game, compared to West Ham’s 9, so they were creating more. They only managed 5 on target, the same as the Hammers, but 3 of those shots on target were goals, which gave them a shot conversion percentage of 33%. Of the shots they had on target, the conversion percentage was 60%. Here’s the shooting statistics:

The Second Goal

Much like the first, came following some good West Ham play. However sloppy defending led to a second Swansea goal. Collins’ attempted back pass came short of Jaaskelainen, and Michu swooped in to cooly finish and give the Swans a 2-0 lead.

Swansea were able to capitalize on West Ham’s defensive error’s and were able to clear the ball from danger, West Ham never successfully cleared the ball, and always allowed Swansea to come back. Swansea managed 35 clearances, 23 of which were successful, giving them a clearance success percentage of 65.7% whereas West Ham only successfully cleared 6 of 18 attempted clearances, giving them a success percentage of 33.3%, considerably lower. Here are some defensive stats of the game:

The Third Goal

By this stage in the second half West Ham were pushing up, and playing a high line to pressure Swansea in their own half, but were susceptible to the break away goal, which incidentally happened, a fine Danny Graham finish courtesy of some poor offside trap play by Winston Reid.

On this late summers day, Swansea’s free-flowing attacking football was too much for a sloppy West Ham side, there are many positives for Swansea to take after comfortably beating a side which will hopefully finish in a similar mid table league position to them. Michael Laudrup has Swansea playing great football and will be a challenge for any of the top sides.