Lanzini Benched as Snoddy Gets Full Debut for Hammers

Sam Byram is out and its back to makeshift defence for Bilic's men. Manny Lanzini is relegated to the bench as Robert Snodgrass gets his full debut. Southampton's big January signing Manolo Gabbiadini starts.

West Ham United
1. Darren Randolph
8. Cheikhou Kouyate
2. Winston Reid
23. Jose Fonte
30. Michail Antonio
14. Pedro Obiang
16. Mark Noble
3. Aaron Cresswell
7. Sofiane Feghouli
9. Andy Carroll
11. Robert Snodgrass
Subs: 10. Manuel Lanzini, 13. Adrian, 19. James Collins, 24. Ashley Fletcher, 28. Jonathan Calleri
31. Edimilson Fernandes, 36. Domingos Quina

Southampton
1. Fraser Forster
2. Cedric Soares
24. Jack Stephens
3. Maya Yoshida
21. Ryan Bertrand
16. James Ward-Prowse
14. Oriol Romeu
8. Steven Davis
19. Sofiane Boufal
20. Manolo Gabbiadini
9. Jay Rodriguez
Subs
4. Jordy Clasie
5. Florin Gardos
7. Shane Long
22. Nathan Redmond
23. Pierre-Emile Hojbjerg
28. Stuart Taylor
38. Sam McQueen

French Turn Against Pie-eh? Already

Roughly translated as 'who ate all the puddings'

Mon Dieu! Poor old Dimitri Payet - we promised not to mention him again but it's just too damn juicy to pass on the fact that having returned 'home' to France, he now finds that the media are mocking him because of his ...ahem....portly demeanour!

As the major sports publication en France, L'Equipe played a major role in the whole dastardly betrayal of West Ham, but has shown it's colours with a hurtful cartoon in today's paper - accusing poor old Dimitri of eating too much pudding during his time away!

Clearly they haven't even bothered to research the preferred diet of the East End region and at no point mention the local delicacy of pie n mash!

Payet has yet to play a full game for Marseille and after two substitute appearances has had little useful impact and Marseille remain stuck just above mid table in Ligue 1.

Training with the West Ham crew

If he flops at Marseille then we can be sure that there will be loads of clubs happy to take him on at a cut price, but neither St Etienne nor West Ham are likely to be in the queue for the jellied little eel!

Hammers Fans Finally Give Zaza What He Needs

After a wholly unimpressive 5 months at West Ham profligate striker Simone Zaza is still all talk and no action. In an effort to explain away his failure to deliver a single goal during his time in the Premiership, he has put it down to culture (?), environment (?), nutrition and training! nowhere in that is any acknowledgement of what was obvious to fans - who had to endure his poor first touch, mindless runs off the ball and poor finishing - that he lacked the necessary quality to hack it in the top league!

Speaking candidly, he explained "When I got there I found a different method of training: you exercise less, sometimes the sessions last 40 minutes and almost immediately I didn’t feel good. I need to train more, for someone to kick my arse".

Funny how he didn't mention that while he was actually at West Ham as no doubt there would have been a long queue of fans only too happy to oblige!

Interestingly, Zaza has yet to score since his move to Valencia - I suppose that'll be the hot climate and paella to blame!



 

City at Full Strength While Parker is Out for West Ham

There was a time (2007-2012 to be precise) when the absence of Captain Fantastic Scott Parker would have been devastating to West Ham's chance of getting a result. However, time moves on, and it's the absence of Peter Parker AKA Spiderman that threatens the Hammers hopes of getting a smile out of tonight's clash with the Blue Moonies.


The last time the Moonies visited the London stadium they dished out an almighty 5-0 hiding to a lacklustre Hammers. The night that had virtually nothing to redeem it until in the 87th minute two pranksters entered the field dressed as Spiderman and a generic cosplayer and proceeded to re-enact Man City's soft penalty that opened their account and tilted what had been a tight game up until then in their favour. 


With pitch invasion now condemned by the authorities and legally considered equivalent to trespassing since 1991, Spidey and his mate await their punishment and are unlikely to be in any position to offer a repeat performance to cheer the crowd if Man City produce another demolition job. with Aguero and Toure both fit and ready to play, it'll be a baptism of fire for Fonte and Snodgrass (can we call him Snods or Snoddy yet?)

BTW even at the grand old age of 36 years and three months Scott Parker is still putting in the performances for Fulham - more than 20 so far this season!

As for VERYWESTHAM, we'll be watching the game from Leamington before going to see top Man City fan Mark E Smith and the fall bash out a few tunes. Word is that the Fall are on stage at 9.45....that should give them just enough time to catch Michail Antonio's injury time winner?


Confirmed Teams:

West Ham: Randolph, Byram, Reid, Fonte, Cresswell, Noble, Obiang, Feghouli, Lanzini, Antonio, Carroll. Subs: Adrian, Snodgrass, Collins, Fletcher, Calleri, Fernandes, Quina

Manchester City: Caballero, Sagna, Stones, Otamendi, Kolarov, De Bruyne, Toure, Sane, Silva, Jesus. Subs: Bravo, Kompany, Zabaleta, Aguero, Navas, Delph, Fernandinho

 

 



 

Hammers to Re-Sign Poyet?

SuperSlav starts the revolution!

One of the more disappointing non-successes of recent times was the failure of young Diego Poyet to make the grade at the highest level. Son of Gus, he featured in a video for transformers as the cream of young British footballing talent and looked destined for greatness when West Ham captured him from Charlton in 2013.

However, Diego never quite made the grade - suffering from Big Sam's over-reliance on experienced players and was not favoured by SuperSlav when he took over the reigns. After just ten appearances, half of which were in the Europa League, he departed last Summer.

Since then, he has failed to nail down a decent contract and is on the loose at present with a number of Premiership sides interested, including Swansea and Hull City. Having met the lad a few times he comes across as a real gentleman and wherever he goes next we all wish him the very best. At 21 years of age, he remains an excellent prospect.

As West Ham face into the challenge of erasing Dimitri Payet from our memories, perhaps the return of Poyet would provide much-needed extra cover in midfield and would also be an ideal opportunity to rebrand all those replica shirts!



 

Major Purge Begins at Olympic Stadium

It's official, a certain person never existed. The last decent French player to grace the Claret n Blue was Julien Faux-Pas, and nobody can think of any since.

The Olympic Stadium this morning has a new mural - of Andy Carroll's wonderstrike against Crystal Palace. I think there was a picture of Leon Trotsky there before that, probably.

For just like Stalin's dreaded purges, we have airbrushed a certain player out of our memories.

Just one problem, what should we do with all the Dimitri Payet merchandise that we have, or the replica shirts ruined forever by the name of (now) another club's player?

P.S. whatever else, Andy's goal is worthy of a mural though, isn't it - bloody great timing by the big man!



 

Tightwad Hammers on edge of Premiership Spending Relegation Zone

Huff...puff...huff...puff...and then we don't deliver. So it seems is the recurring pattern of all our recent transfer windows. After the 'excitement' of last night's window closing, a quick analysis shows that West Ham made a net profit of £7million with their January business thus placing them in 17th in the net spending tables!

Below us were Chelsea - by virtue of the £60 million sale of Oscar, Man united who had a bloated squad in need of pruning and Watford who obviously feel that this season is now a dead rubber and are looking to build in the Summer - a philosophy one suspects that the astute businessmen who run our club have also succumbed to. The word from Sky was that Mr Sullivan told the club to turn off the fax machines at 8pm and go home - do they really still ise fax machines?

We are ten points short of the magic 38 needed to survive but last night's results showed that the relegation battle could get lively as Palace, Swansea et al pulled off unexpected results. We failed to get a striker or a right back - acquisitions that even the tea lady knows we desperately need!

Although this is all very disappointing (again), we all know that January rarely brings anything except more rubbish that ultimately needs to be offloaded to the charity shop.

With Sakho back in training and Fletcher looking promising (albeit without scoring too often) and Calleri having hinally opened his account, and the ever-dependable Antonio capable of filling in as a decent striker, maybe Bilic and the Davids got it right.

Did anyone realky believe Scott Hogan was 'the one' to replace Dean Ashton as a genuinely scary forward to lead the line?

Maybe its wise to hold back in this inflated market - however, the question is, will we ever actually splash the cash?

Or is Mr Paranoid at the VWH office right when he whines that we are being financially fattened up for a new investor?