Swansea once again couldn't stop Andy Carroll, but Gomis showed that - if he stays - he has enough to lead the line
With Sam Allardyce tucked up at home recovering from a chest infection, Neil McDonald was charged with overseeing West Ham's visit to the Liberty this afternoon, but I'm pretty confident it wasn't his choice to go with three central defenders. It was a bold tactical move - I can't remember West Ham operating in this manner in the past, though I'm hardly an authority on their tactical history - and one which threatened to stop the Swans from creating anything of note.
The game saw Swansea retain the majority of possession, but for a while it looked like we would get nothing from it. In the first half we were making nice patterns in possession but it wasn't really going anywhere and when it did - at the end of the first half - we didn't take them. Sigurdsson & Routledge missed the best of the Swans chances, while Andy Carroll proceeded to respond to our taunts by stuffing in a worldy of a goal.
Up until then I thought we'd managed Carroll well, and if he does something like that there's not too much you can do about it. Ok, Fernandez could have got closer to him but it was a great finish - though choosing to come over and celebrate in such a manner was far from advisable.
In managing the areas of the pitch Carroll could win headers and bring the ball down, it meant we weren't as exposed as we were at the Boleyn Ground before Christmas. Tom Carroll was dropping deeper than Leon Britton with such frequency that it must have been through tactical instruction, and this allowed him to harry Carroll, or whoever he'd redirected a long ball to.
Gomis' goal came with James Collins off the field after receiving treatment, and it was Collins who'd been marking him for the entire match. West Ham will be annoyed but Gomis certainly wasn't, and I thought he easily had his best game in a Swans shirt. It took him a while to figure out how far off the ball he had to hold the West Ham defender, but once he did his touch came to him and he got better and better. As for the goal, he steered a header across goal and got a bit lucky in that it hit the post and Noble before going in, but he'd worked hard and deserved a goal I felt.
Make no bones about it - this wasn't the free-flowing West Ham of early this season. They were looking for Carroll every time and why not? It was working, to a point. They went 1-0 up, and until we got our equaliser there was no real reason why they'd have changed it.
On the balance of play, I think a draw was a fair result. West Ham can crow about missed chances, but at the same time they sat back happy to defend for the entire match, and their goal didn't change their tactical outlook one bit. They possibly dropped deeper once they had the lead, but with a back five for the majority of the match they were unable to match us in central midfield, where Tom Carroll & Leon Britton were able to exert their tika-taka influence.
The return of Leon Britton to the team has, unsurprisingly, coincided with a return to favourable possession statistics. All season we've struggled to retain the ball, but it appears that fixing the problem really has been as simple as plonking Leon back into the centre of our midfield - and possibly Jonjo sitting a few games out through suspension. We had 56.4% possession today, 58.8% against QPR...it's no coincidence that Leon Britton played in both of those matches.
Hopefully Leon & Carroll will be able to continue their partnership in midfield - at least until Ki returns from the Asian Cup. If we can retain the cutting edge that Sigurdsson was helping to provide earlier in the season and return to the possession game we've utilised so well for so long, we could well build a head of steam as we head into the second half of the season.