Sunday 20 November 2016

Sifting Through the Rubble after WHL Horror Show

As the dust settles on what was one of the most disappointing defeats EVER for Hammers fans, we can perhaps look at the game more objectively. We showed great courage to get ahead twice in a game where we conceded the lions share of the possession (67%!!!). The principal factor in this was the resolute defending with Winston Reid in particular really putting in a massive shift. 

That his game ended with a red card was just one more misfortune in what ended as a sickening day. He will miss the Man United game which will make it even harder to get a result to lift us away from the drop zone. Even though we don't deserve to be quite as low in the Premiership as 17th, as Hammers fans we know that once you go into the drop zone the bad luck becomes infectious.

Up front Diafra Sakho was a delight to watch. He hurried and harried the Spurs defence and given his lack of match time over the past 6 months he put in a tremendous hour's work. Simone Zaza was awful and messed up a chance to bury Spurs when we were 2-1 up but dallied and the chance slipped away. He needs a new club. Andre Ayew has yet to play well for us but its early days.

Which brings us to the Spurs goals. All three came from moves down our right side. The first involved a hand ball by Janssen, the second was grave misfortune but a decent right back would have blocked passage before the ball whizzed across to Harry Kane. Dazza Randolph got a hand to it but in doing so made Kane's task all the easier. The penalty was a moment of utter madness from Nordtveit. Randolph almost pulled off a wonder save despite Kane's precision. Hmmm.

Alvaro Arbeloa must be wondering what is going on. He silently slipped off the radar a few weeks back for no apparent reason. He didn't play badly at any point and is not injured. Bilic has changed our system somewhat - and is once again experimenting with playing our best attacker in a defensive role! However, there is no such difficulty on the left, so why not play a specialist right back on the right?

The January transfer window is not the ideal place to look for decent first team additions or indeed for value, but we need a major clear out. All of the loan deals have been disappointingly unsuccessful and Tore, Zaza and Calleri should be let go asap. Nordtveit has been solid (apart from yesterday's foolishness which will unfortunately be remembered for ever!), Feghouli has looked interesting but without a cutting edge. Fletcher is developing. Let's hope Sakho is back for real and not just to ready him for a move in January. With Andy Carroll we need to  cut our losses and just plan for him not ever being reliably available and enjoy it when he is.

We need to dust ourselves down and focus upon the Old Trafford visits. We deserved at least a draw at Spurs but that's history now. The cup competitions still present a good chance to make our season memorable for positive reasons.

COYI!!!

2 comments:

  1. Antonio wasn't considered good enough when he first came to us now playing out of position Obiang was going to be sold tore so bad a signing Koyote playing deep so many wrongs in my opinion

    ReplyDelete
  2. Just read this morning how much the manager welcomes our captain back here we go again back to square one no chance in cups keep hoping can't understand team selection anymore

    ReplyDelete

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