It's Going to Be a Long, Long Season at West Ham

West Ham 0-2 Newcastle at the London Stadium.

Given what's transpired over the past week or so, it's not a result that was wholly unexpected. If anything, West Ham should probably be pleased with the end scoreline, given how bad their performance was.

There's one thing we already knew about West Ham heading into this first game, and it's the fact they love a slow start. In the last four seasons, the opening day has pitted the club against Manchester City, Liverpool, Manchester United and Chelsea. The Hammers have lost every time.

In three of those games, West Ham have been absolutely annihilated, bringing the aggregate score overall to a mind boggling one goal scored, 15 conceded.

Facing Newcastle was a chance for opening day respite. An opportunity to prove that the summer of frustration that has culminated in captain Mark Noble publicly denouncing the sale of bright young prospect Grady Diangana wasn't as terrible as everybody thought it was.

Except, on Saturday's evidence, it was. And it's probably worse than first feared.

Not only are West Ham still operating against a backdrop of overwhelming fan discontent - desperate to see the back of David Sullivan, David Gold and Karren Brady - they appear to still be a side who are tactically naive and very, very easy to play against.

They are also a team who have signed just one player this summer - Tomáš Souček - and that was because the club had an obligation to sign him permanently after he joined on loan in January. Outside of that, there doesn't appear to be much of an appetite to bring in new faces, outside of a couple of rejected bids for Burnley's James Tarkowski that were never going to persuade Sean Dyche's Clarets to sell.

Now this isn't a personal slight against manager David Moyes, nor is it a crusade to say he's not up to the job at hand.

But on the evidence of what we saw against Newcastle, there's some fundamental differences between what the Scotsman thinks will work for West Ham and what his players are actually capable of.

Take Michail Antonio, for example. He enjoyed, on the surface, a fantastic end to the 2019/20 campaign, scoring eight goals post-lockdown to haul the Hammers to safety. Four of those came in the same game against whipping boys Norwich, it must be added, but eight goals in such a short time frame is nothing to be sniffed at.

In each of those post-restart clashes, Antonio was deployed as lone wolf up front. Tasked with picking up the ball, turning and driving at the defence and doing basically whatever he felt like doing. Or at least that's how it looked.

The trouble is, Antonio only knows a certain number of ways to skin a cat. Precisely one, to be exact. Head down, front up the defender and try to knock it past him. There's no finesse involved, there's nothing flashy and there's nothing complicated, it's straight up bulldozing his way through. Oh, and he drifts out to the channel all the time - leaving nobody in the most dangerous areas of the pitch.

That, on occasion, is a good way to go. But for that and a diagonal long ball searching for the head of Souček is surely not what West Ham want to be doing all season. Antonio, for all intents and purposes, is a winger. Never before has he been a lone frontman, so why at the age of 30 have the club decided he's the man to lead the line, on his own, ahead of £45m club-record signing, and natural striker, Sebastien Haller?

It just doesn't make any sense, particularly when the pair looked pretty handy together against Southampton and Arsenal in a pre-lockdown 4-4-2.

There's also the decision to play Mark Noble further up the field, almost in a number ten role. Adored by the club at every level - fans, teammates, catering staff, janitors, mascots - he personifies West Ham and will do anything to propel the club forward.

But the reality is, Noble has got no pace to break through the lines and everything is done - as they would say in cricketing circles - at a military medium pace. There's no impetus, no drive, no flow to his play and you can only generate momentum through quick transitions and an insightful eye for a brisk pass.

Noble breaks up the play, recycles it sidewise, takes a good penalty and knows how to throw in a good tactical foul every now and again. That's literally it.

There's many more deficiencies that could be addressed, but those will be aired over the coming weeks as West Ham - almost inevitably, given the fixtures they have coming up - find themselves in the relegation zone with eight games played.

The question is, how bad will things be at that stage? The answer is not one that any fan will want to hear.

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