Why James Ward-Prowse To West Ham Is An Incredible Transfer
West Ham's James Ward-Prowse and his reputation for being the Premier League's best free-kick taker.
Category
🥇
SportsTranscript
00:00 (upbeat music)
00:02 - Hi everyone, Adam Cleary from 442 here.
00:06 And just, you're not, you're not gonna believe this, right?
00:09 But I just finished recording a video about West Ham United
00:12 and their signing of Edson Alvarez
00:14 and what that means for the team and all of that.
00:16 And then, gone to make a cup of tea, come back,
00:19 and have bought James Ward-Prowse.
00:21 Now what I should do is just go,
00:22 "Oh, that's nice," and work on my Alvarez video
00:24 and put that out and then talk about Ward-Prowse
00:27 later in the week.
00:28 I'm just, I'm addicted.
00:30 I am addicted to the views and I know where they are.
00:33 I have an actual illness, so.
00:35 (bell dings)
00:38 So my descent into madness for one side for a moment.
00:41 James Ward-Prowse to West Ham United.
00:45 What a signing that is, by the way.
00:47 Now you already know loads about JWP.
00:50 That's the only time I'm gonna call them that, I swear.
00:51 You know loads about him, don't you?
00:53 He's this set piece specialist.
00:56 He's deadly from the dead ball.
00:58 He's David Beckham, just with less modeling contracts.
01:01 And do you know what, you're right, he is.
01:02 He's probably the best dead ball specialist
01:05 in the Premier League right now, bar none.
01:08 His delivery from corner kicks on both sides
01:11 is absolutely excellent.
01:12 His delivery from free kicks, whether they're deep
01:15 or they're short or they're wide or they're central,
01:17 is second to almost none.
01:18 You don't need me to tell you that he can hit them as well.
01:20 In fact, he's only one free kick goal behind David Beckham
01:24 in the all-time Premier League rankings for those now.
01:26 And how's this for a stat?
01:28 Since 2013, only Lionel Messi has scored more free kicks
01:32 than James Ward-Prowse, and Messi's done it
01:34 with over twice as many shots,
01:36 meaning that Ward-Prowse has a better conversion rate
01:40 over the last 10 years.
01:42 In fact, even if you take that statistic
01:44 all the way back to 2006 and 2007,
01:46 thank you, Opta, for this stat.
01:48 There's still only Ronaldo and Messi
01:50 have scored more free kicks since then,
01:53 since like 18 years or whatever it is,
01:55 despite the fact he wasn't playing
01:57 for the first six of those.
01:59 That's wild, isn't it?
02:00 And this is really, really useful for West Ham,
02:02 because if you look at them last season
02:03 in terms of where they rank for chances created
02:06 from set pieces and goals scored from set pieces,
02:09 they're fairly, they're middling.
02:10 They're not really anything exceptional.
02:12 They're certainly not near the bottom of the league,
02:13 but they're certainly not near the top.
02:14 But if you look at the total number of dead balls
02:16 they actually had in the Premier League last year,
02:18 they are in fact way near the bottom.
02:21 So they're already over-performing
02:23 where you would expect them to be in this regard,
02:25 which means they convert dead ball chances
02:28 really, really well.
02:29 You're all the way in sort of middle to upper table
02:32 in terms of the goals you get from them
02:33 and the chances you create from them,
02:35 but you're all the way down near the bottom
02:36 in terms of the number you get.
02:38 So you sign a player who's gonna be able to take them
02:40 for more positions, who you're gonna be more reliant upon
02:42 to be delivering them, and all of a sudden
02:44 the number's gonna go up, and thus by extension,
02:46 that number's gonna go up.
02:48 Like, case in point, Southampton were absolutely minging
02:50 last season and bottom of pretty much every single table
02:53 you care to measure them on,
02:54 but they were pretty much right next to Arsenal
02:56 in terms of the number of chances they were able to create
02:58 from a set piece.
02:59 Almost as if there was someone in the team
03:01 delivering them with incredible quality.
03:04 But the thing about James Ward-Prouse
03:05 is you can't just think of him purely as this, like,
03:08 dead ball specialist free kick-taker.
03:10 He has so many other attributes to his game
03:13 that made him so valuable to Southampton
03:16 that are important.
03:16 And they are so important because they are things
03:18 that West Ham have specifically lost
03:21 by selling Declan Rice.
03:22 Think about it, West Ham have just lost an academy graduate
03:26 with leadership qualities who set standards
03:28 both on and off the pitch,
03:30 who always put in committed performances
03:32 even when the team weren't playing that well,
03:34 who was super, super fit, who covered so much of the pitch.
03:38 You ask any Southampton fan to describe James Ward-Prouse
03:42 to you, and obviously once you get past the point
03:44 about him hitting a brilliant free kick, mate,
03:46 those are the exact words they'd use.
03:48 Do you know what people from Southampton sound like?
03:49 I've never been.
03:50 And all the other stuff he does on the pitch
03:52 is just really good and very easy to miss
03:54 with how bad Southampton were as a unit last season.
03:56 Now obviously if you've got the new David Beckham
03:58 coming through the youth ranks,
03:59 you'd probably play him on the right-hand side,
04:01 and indeed Ward-Prouse did when he was coming through,
04:03 but then he sort of settled into more of a central area
04:05 because the game has changed.
04:07 You can't just have a dead, you've gotta be able to play.
04:10 (upbeat music)
04:12 But as a by-product of that,
04:19 whether he was playing a sort of the right-sided one
04:21 in a four, two, three, one,
04:22 or the right-sided pivot in a four, two, three, one,
04:24 he would drift out into these spaces here.
04:27 He would occupy a far more sort of wide position
04:30 than he would a central one.
04:31 Now as you can see straight away,
04:32 part of the reason you do this
04:33 is because it gives you great passing angles
04:35 for either strikers getting around the far post,
04:38 wide attackers making a run,
04:39 just getting players in behind defences.
04:41 It's really useful to have him there.
04:43 Now if I'm David Boyes and I've got Alvarez coming in,
04:45 I probably do start to play a four, two, three, one
04:47 to allow Alvarez to do a lot
04:48 of James Ward-Prouse's defensive legwork,
04:50 but Ward-Prouse can do that himself.
04:53 He reads the game exceptionally well
04:55 in terms of making blocks and interceptions.
04:57 In fact, given how bad his overall defensive numbers are,
04:59 which I should say, if you're looking at that
05:01 and the alarm bells are going off, bear in mind,
05:03 that's not his job, so he's not gonna score highly in them.
05:05 He still does really well for intercepting the ball.
05:08 And what you can infer from that is
05:09 while he's not defensively minded,
05:11 he is always alive to what the other team is doing.
05:14 He should regain the ball really well for Southampton
05:17 in the middle and attacking thirds.
05:18 Now something that he might be able to do at West Ham,
05:21 which he wasn't really able to do at Southampton
05:23 because it became more and more reliant
05:25 on his influence on how they attacked,
05:27 is sort of be more patient,
05:29 because when James Ward-Prouse is patient in attack,
05:33 he's deadly.
05:33 And what I mean by that is not being the first pass
05:36 everybody's looking for.
05:37 Like you could see with Southampton last year,
05:38 every time they got into a dangerous position,
05:40 everyone's first thought was, "Where's Prousey?
05:43 I need to give the ball to Prousey."
05:44 But West Ham have other good attacking players,
05:47 so it's not gonna be on Ward-Prouse
05:48 to constantly bomb up box to box
05:50 to both help with his defensive responsibilities
05:52 and to make sure he's always available
05:55 for a pass in the final third.
05:56 And what that allows him to do,
05:57 which a player of his skillset should always do,
06:00 is arrive late.
06:01 Not to crash the box to try and get on the end of something,
06:04 but to be the player that effectively locks in an attack.
06:07 If we just sort of imagine here
06:08 that West Ham are playing a 4-2-3-1,
06:10 all of the formation doesn't matter for this.
06:12 They win the ball back and they wanna rush it
06:14 up the other end of the pitch.
06:15 They wanna get a transition going.
06:16 Obviously, all your attacking players,
06:17 they'll push up as much as they can.
06:19 They'll be occupying the defenders, the fullbacks.
06:21 They'll push them right towards their own goal.
06:23 You'll get a very attack-minded midfielder.
06:24 They'll join in, the fullbacks, they love to get involved.
06:27 So they'll be there as well.
06:28 All of a sudden, you'll start penning in
06:29 and penning in and penning in.
06:31 And then, presuming they weren't able to fashion a chance
06:33 and they're now recycling possession,
06:35 then James Ward-Prouse arrives.
06:37 And all the players with defensive responsibility
06:39 for the other team, they're occupied,
06:41 they're in their position, they've got their block going,
06:42 they know what they're doing,
06:43 which means Prouse is now spare.
06:46 And when these players are now recycling the ball around,
06:48 trying to find a way to unlock the defense,
06:50 there's James Ward-Prouse, unmarked, gets the ball.
06:53 It effectively becomes a dead ball situation for them.
06:56 And he can just get his head up.
06:57 He can find a runner at the back post.
06:59 He can get a fullback in around the back.
07:00 He can play somebody in with a slide pass.
07:02 He's the perfect player to have in that position
07:05 when you've sort of completely flipped the possession.
07:08 The problem he had at Southampton
07:09 was he was so important to them,
07:10 he had to break his neck to get forward
07:11 to be part of that initial thrust,
07:13 which means he was one of the players
07:14 who then effectively got picked up and got marked.
07:17 Playing for West Ham,
07:18 playing with other better attacking players
07:21 should free him up a bit.
07:22 So yeah, you take the fact that he is a fantastic player,
07:24 both on and off the ball,
07:26 who was gonna take his teammates to levels
07:28 they were not at last season,
07:29 and the fact that he's also got the right personality type
07:32 to fill the enormous hole you've just got
07:35 from losing your best player.
07:36 And I'm honestly struggling to think,
07:39 at 30 million quid,
07:40 struggling to think of a better transfer
07:43 I've seen this summer.
07:44 West Ham still have a lot of work to do,
07:46 and admittedly this hasn't been finalised yet,
07:48 but I'd be feeling a lot better about next season now
07:52 than I was a week ago.
07:53 And just, I'm still not over this.
07:55 This video was nowhere near as good
07:56 as the one I'd already recorded
07:58 about Alvarez and Maguire and whatnot,
08:00 but that one didn't have James Lord Prowse in it, did it?
08:02 So if you're a West Ham fan,
08:04 I can understand why this is probably more interesting.
08:07 But I mean, if you're a West Ham fan,
08:08 that just gives you all the more reason
08:10 to subscribe to the channel,
08:11 'cause I will get around to doing that at some point,
08:12 and it is honestly very good.
08:14 And as for the rest of you,
08:15 if you did enjoy this video,
08:17 please do consider subscribing.
08:18 It's the one thing you guys can do
08:19 that really directly does help us out,
08:21 'cause we get more subs,
08:22 and we show it to all the big boss men
08:24 and the decision makers and go,
08:25 "Look, people like this,
08:26 and they wanna watch more of it,
08:27 so help us make more."
08:29 And they go, "Okay, we'll help you make more."
08:31 And that's all I want to do.
08:33 In the meantime, though, let's continue the conversation.
08:35 Why not?
08:35 Not like I've got anything else on, @AdamCleary,
08:37 C-L-E-R-Y, Twitter, Instagram, pretty much everywhere else.
08:40 We have a 442 Fantasy League team,
08:44 which we would dearly like you all to come and join.
08:46 The description will be below,
08:48 but I'll probably just put it on screen
08:49 just so that it goes into your brain a little bit easier.
08:51 Please do join us there.
08:52 We are, I haven't got it yet,
08:54 but we are considering doing excellent fun prizes
08:57 every single month for people who score lots of points
09:01 in that, so to be announced.
09:02 In the meantime, though, Adam Cleary, 442,
09:04 James Wood Prowse, West Ham United.
09:06 Thank you very much for watching.