It’s that time of year again, when thoughts turn to cup glory and the romance and fantastic stories that the FA Cup normally delivers.
None of these were apparent at Upton Park yesterday where an uninventive WHU beat a Wolves team looking for a draw.
The main problem from a hammers perspective was there was no one in the midfield who wanted to go forward until Payet came on. Noble, Song, Zarate, and Obiang were happy to pass it sideways all day long. Zarate tried a couple of shots from distance, and as usual refused to pass to players in better positions. Song and Noble seemed to be trying to make the perfect pass through defence with little success. All in all, this left Jelavic isolated and he lost interest pretty early on.
What also didn’t help was that Wolves played with 8 players back most of the time, which as Sheffield United demonstrated to Man U yesterday, is a little frustrating. This surprised me ,as they had some good breaks, and made the space, but then ran out of people to pass to due to them all being in their own penalty box.
It will not surprise anyone to know the first shot on target for either team was in the 16th minute.
Finally , Payet and Carroll were introduced and the game changed, for the better. It’s amazing how Payet lifts the whole team to play better. With 5 minutes to go, Carroll laid off the ball for Jelavic to smash in a great half volley.
So , we are in the hat for the next round, but will have to up our game to progress in this competition.
MOTM (after my slagging of the midfield) was Pedro Obiang. He kept breaking up play through tackling and sharp reading of the opposition passes.
Everyone enjoying the exciting game from the bar..
Yesterday we welcomed one of the new teams to the Premiership. I for one, was not sure of victory as we had had a tough game at Leicester during the week, which was lost in extra time. This was born out by the WHU start which was leggy to say the best. Noble and Kouyate especially were out of sorts and just looked knackered. Just as well we are not still in Europe !
Noble summed this up just before the 10 minute mark, by directing a lazy pass across our goal looking for Tomkins. This was intercepted by Brady who coolly opened the scoring for the canaries.
West Ham huffed and puffed throughout the half. Just after the half hour mark we managed an equalizer when Payet and Sakho combined well to finish with a tap in to make it 1 – 1 at half time.
No subs at half time for WHU , which surprised me, as I wouldn’t have been amazed to see neither Noble, Koutaye, or Jenkinson come out for the second half.
The second half was very much more of the same in what was becoming a easy to forget game. Nathan Redmond came on near the end and I imagine thought he had scored the winner when once again Noble fell short to allow Redmond’s shot to find Adrian’s bottom corner.
Then WHU woke up, and we threw everything at them including Andy Carroll who got himself into a couple of good positions, which were well covered by Ruddy, who also made a great save from Payet. Ruddy’s luck ran out when he tried to punch out a Free kick with Carroll bearing down on him and got it as far as Kouyate, who finished well to secure a draw with seconds to go
So, a point at home keeps us in 3rd and 1 point closer to Man City, but Arsenal, Liverpool and Tottenham, are 2 points closer to us. Fairplay to Slaven, who had no problem taking off our Captain, as he was having a shocker, maybe a little earlier next time. He also finished with 2 up top, which is encouraging, but with Moses and Payet, you will always have some sort of forward presence.
The Norwich fans seem to be turning into some sort of Palace style “Ultra” support model, which is funny if nothing else.
MOTM was both goalkeepers who kept the goals with some great saves, especially Adrian with his face, which must of stung a bit. With all these saves you would think the game was a classic, it really wasn’t. It was a bit of an attritional game and the score was about right, although Norwich may feel they shaded it, but they did sacrifice the lead twice.
Last season two of our most admired players were Aaron Cresswell and Carl Jenkinson . Aaron picked up Hammer of the year and Jenks was the first name on the shopping list for most fans following his successful season on loan.
Yesterday, they both had shockers and gifted all 4 goals to Bournemouth. First up was Cresswell slipping over to allow an easy cross and shot, followed by passing a ball straight into the path of Hat Trick Hero Callum Wilson to net his second.
After last week’s great win against Arsenal our old friend expectation was unleashed at the Boleyn ground, as Leicester came into town to play the Hammers. However our opponents were on a high having won 4-2 against Sunderland on the opening day of the season.
WHU start young Reece Oxford again, in his place in front of the back four. This, as much as it hurts to say, was our undoing. WHU started well hitting the bar after 2 minutes from another great free kick from our buy of the season Payet. After the first 10 minutes of all out assault we reverted to a Sam style play from the back model, with Reid and Ogbonna swapping passes constantly and failing to come forward. Oxford was sort of caught up in this and it was noticeable that he was lost, and Leicester’s shape meant he had no one to mark either giving him no focus.
This led to him missing the pass from Vardy to Okazaki for the first, and also being caught out coming back when he should of been marking Mahrez for the second. However I wont lay everything at his young door, as our midfield should be been keener in supporting the front 2 and maybe keeping the ball up the other end.
So we go in at half time 2 down and it was time for Bilic to earn his money. He obviously said something because WHU came out flying in the second half, and within 10 minutes Payet had reduced the deficit to 1 after taking a great chance at the second opportunity. We continued to attack and a draw was on the cards but Leicester knew this and started to slow the game down. Near the end Sakho had a great chance in front of goal, which was stopped by the diving body of Schmeichel .
We are now into time added on and WHU apply more pressure, THEN, Adrian comes up for a corner. As the ball is cleared Adrian sees his chance for an overhead kick back into the box. Without taking stock of his surroundings he goes for it. And boots a Leicester player straight in the chest and gets a straight red. This is a problem. We will now have Darren Randolph in the sticks for the next 3 games.
This is the real West Ham way, just when you think it’s going well, we literally kick ourselves down.
MOTM for WHU Payet. Great goal, and great all round effort. Special shout out to Mahrez for Leicester who also looks a quality player.
First WHU blog of this year, as various work and personal stuff has kept me away from Upton Park for nearly 6 weeks. This post up until about 45 seconds from the end of the game was going to be based on the famous Norwegian “We beat your boys ” speech. However as we probably all know by now, Danny Blind , shinned in an equalizer in the dying seconds of the game.
Games ends one-one and 30 odd thousand WHU fans go home royally pissed.
That said Kouyate as well as scoring, played very well as a drafted in centre back. Everyone in fact played well including everyones favourite hammer, Kevin Nolan. Yep. He actually played well.
We have been talking about getting in centre backs as cover for ages, but no, we spend most of transfer deadline day pissing about lodging good strikers to buy pain in the backside strikers, and moving on wingers who have had no opportunities and then failed at all of the above. Hence today we play one of our best midfielders next to James Tomkins. And we still dont know what’s happening to Winston Reid. Well, we do but no one wants to admit it.
Our opponents today were the rejuvenated Man Utd. And to be honest they didn’t look a patch on previous teams I’ve seen over the years. Falcao will not be there next season based on his performance, not to mention missing a clear opportunity. Rooney cannot be enjoying playing the midfield with Van Persie, Falcao and Di Maria missfiring all over the place. Jones still doesn’t look good enough to lead the Man U defence and should be replaced at the earliest chance.
I’m sure in time we will respect the point, but at the moment, I feel as if we threw away 2 points. Even more annoying, is our opponents will feel they won a point. I did call a representative from Man U for a quote but unfortunately couldn’t get through so you will just have to believe me when I say they were lucky to get anything.
MOTM Kouyate, and hopefully WHU are back on the road to winning after our recent blips.
“We are coming for you, we’re coming for yououuuuuuu. Barcelona, we’re coming for you ! “
That was the main chant post the second goal of WHU’s 2-0 win yesterday that helped WHU secure a top 4 position over Xmas for the first time in Premiership history.
This game was a home banker but didn’t play out that well, with West Ham making lots of silly mistakes early on. Most of these errors were happening in the centre back positions with both Reid and Tomkins making poor decisions and bad passes. Leicester didn’t capitalise on this luckily enough, but we were just piling the pressure on ourselves. Continue reading “West Ham United vs Leicester City 20/12/2014 EPL”→
It’s good to be wise when you’re young ‘Cos you can only be young but the once
A bit of an odd one. As Chelsea, Arsenal, Totts and these two London clubs were all playing in the capital yesterday, our games kicked off at 16.20? A new one even for Sky.
Arriving in Green Street wasn’t quite the same as Wembley Way for the NFL, but we did have a band in the car park. Some good old Ska from the SkaTonics who were covering Guy Lombardo’s (and latterly Prince Buster’s and The Specials) Enjoy Yourself. Being a bit of a 2 Tone man myself, I stuck around for a couple of tracks and then headed in with a spring in my step.
Not a massive fan of late kick offs so I dragged myself down to Upton Park for this game which had been moved for our friends on the telly. Having a chat with Angry pre game, and some random turns up and gives us free beer as his mates had disappeared, so the day was looking up. Anyway the bottom line of this chat, was that for us to get anything out of this, Liverpool needed to be having an off day. But at least we have a chance after it appears that Sam’s attacking football ™ is starting to gel, following the Hull game last Monday.
So the game starts in front of a vocal full house and the atmosphere is electric. After 90 seconds it goes to 11 once Winston Reid scores from a Tomkins knock down, the put the hammers into the lead. As everyone was settling into the pattern, of Liverpool attack and WHU counter, when Sakho lofted over Mignolet from the right hand side to double the lead, within 6 minutes. Now, whether it was really a cross or not, I’ll leave for him to answer, but from the Bobby Moore Upper it looked fantastic.
Being a West Ham fan, you know this isn’t enough, so the more Liverpool got the ball, the more concerned for the final result you were. And they got the ball a lot, but Balotelli and Sterling didn’t really offer the threat of a Sturridge and Suarez. One other highlight in the first half was everyones favourite pantomime villain Balotelli, going straight through Adrian, and nearly get a hiding for his trouble, but in the end they both settled for yellow cards. Liverpool got one back just before half time, when a Balotelli shot rebounded off Cresswell onto an onrushing Sterling to fire into the bottom left corner, with a well taken strike. The half time conversation was not as comfortable as you would expect being 2-1 up, and we started the second half waiting for inevitable. Which never came. The scousers battled on and had way more ball. but there was no plan B outside of give it to Sterling. Gerrard wasn’t driving on and Henderson looked like he had regressed two years.
West Ham had the odd counter, but to be fair this period wasn’t as eventful as the first half, unless you count Lovren chasing after Valencia, because Valencia won the ball in the air, but Lovren was convinced he had been butted (he wasn’t, but he had taken a massive bang in the head in first half, so maybe can be forgiven for his reaction). With 2 minutes to go, WHU broke and an improving Downing threaded through a great ball for new boy Amalfitano to slot home the final goal of the game, and end any hope Liverpool had of points today.
I don’t say this very often, but Sam got it right today, keeping Sakho and Valencia up top, and putting in Alex Song with Noble. Alex Song. Now this guy is some player. He doesn’t do any more than anyone else, but everything he does is completed correctly, and without fuss. He makes every pass and sees balls that our other midfielders don’t. And he knows when to put himself out there to pick up a card, just to stop the game. Lets hope he stays. Also something else i don’t say a lot, Downing played well, and seems to be happier in his distribution now we have a quicker frontline. Lets hope Sam allows this midfield to continue to flourish, once Nolan is fit.
Sam also made the right call, by throwing on Collins as soon as Rodgers put in Lambert, to make sure the existing players on the pitch didn’t have to change their style to combat a new offence.
So well played Sam, well played West Ham, and well played Alex Song (MOTM). Going back to my pre game chat, I don’t think Liverpool had an off day, I think they are just at that level without Sturridge. They better enjoy the CL this year, because I don’t think they will be in it next year. Also, If Sterling and Borini would like to stop the diving, that would be nice as well.
Is Adrian angling for a move to Real Madrid. Nice kit anyway.Lovren getting some serious attention from the medical staff
Today, WHU announced that Carl Jenkinson has been signed on a season long loan from Arsenal. This is good news. Young, recent England call up, and knows the league. And he’s half decent. Sam’s summer of attack continues.
The question is , will he take Demel’s place, or is he just backup? Just be like Sam to take a great prospect and stick him on the bench.
Before I get too carried away, lets not forget our last season long Gooner was Henri Lansbury…..
Mrben09 