Narrow margins was Mark Robson’s assessment of West Ham United U21s’ 1-0 defeat in Premier League 2 at Liverpool.
The lead coach had plenty of positives to take from Saturday’s trip as the Hammers were resolute across the pitch, despite leaving Merseyside empty-handed after a first-half strike from Liverpool winger Ben Doak.
A switch to a 4-4-2 was implemented well by the Academy throughout the fixture, with goalkeeper Krisztián Hegyi largely untroubled before Liverpool’s No7 beat him at the near post.
The Hammers head into their final two league fixtures of the 2022/23 campaign confident, although it would have been much sweeter had they managed to find an equaliser and stretch an unbeaten run away from east London to six matches.
It was a solid performance, and we are very unlucky not to get anything.
I don’t think we created enough in attack when we got into good positions. Our final decision maybe let us down on one or two occasions. But I thought we dealt with Liverpool really well and limited them to very few chances.
Keenan Appiah-Forson played really well at right-back today.
I thought he had a really good game both in possession and out of possession. He got forward when he could and in particular in the first half and won us a few corners. He had to do a job for us because of the personnel we had but we felt that we coped admirably. They were a few really good performances today.
We changed shape today and were solid for much of the game with a back four.
Defensively, we did really well and did a good job. Being able to [switch formations] is a credit to the boys and important for their learning. And I felt we did it very well. We work off principles regardless of the shape we play. There are just little tweaks. And it is about sticking to those principles, which we did.
We are disappointed coming away with nothing, but it was a good performance.
There was nothing between the sides. And towards the end, we were stronger. I thought we bossed it. And that was to do with how hard the lads were working. So, I feel for the lads because they’ve come away with nothing when they really deserved something.
I said to the lads after the game that we have two really important games coming up.
But we are all confident. The U21s are a good group. They delivered the game plan against Liverpool and on another day, we get something from it. And if we take that energy, enthusiasm and quality into the next two games, I am confident we can get the results that we need.
