"Van Gaal is a right twat isn't he"
West Ham are in town again and no doubt the most sophisticated manager in the Premier League will have his usual gameplan of
play for a 0-0 for the first whistle and bang the ball up front to the big
bloke. Surely though, having criticized
Van Gaal and Manchester United for playing this way only 3 days ago, he’d be
bringing an expansive and attractive game to the table today so it should be a
good game. Regardless of tactics, West
Ham have been decent this season and have hovered around the table between 6th
and 8th for the majority of it which is a good achievement. Diafra Sakho was signed from the French Lique
2 with no fanfare for the same price that we paid for Mayuka and whilst Mayuka
is piss poor, Sakho obviously isn’t.
Enner Valencia had a great World Cup for Ecuador and has turned up more
often than Agustin Delgado ever did for us.
Fat Sam has been getting plaudits for the way his team have played this
season, using the attacking threat of Jenkinson and Cresswell from full back
and fair play to him for at least partly shedding his image.
There’s not a lot to report about the last few days
since the QPR game from the Saints camp aside from the fact that Djuricic now
has a work permit and is available for the Hammers game unlike Morgan
Schneiderlin who has suffered a ‘bad reaction’ to his half an hour against
QPR. Matt Targett is unavailable for
this game due to the bang on the head he got against QPR. I have seen a few ‘Who will make the
Champions League?’ features in the media and we are universally tipped to
finish 7th behind the big 4 and the other two bunch of twats. I’ll leave you to decided who’s who.
The Saints line-up is as expected with the only
surprise being that Harrison Reed is preferred to JWP who drops to the
bench. Again we’ve gone for the tinpot
approach and only have 6 players on there and the three that will be used are
the aforementioned JWP and the two Serbian boys, Tadic and Djuricic. With Elia and Mané on the wings, I am
massively disappointed that the non-footballing Joey O’Brien has not made Fat
Sam’s starting line up which does seem to be a bit light on midfielders. That area contains only the lightweight
Downing and Amalfitano along with Alex Song so you can see straight away that
that irritating midfield area is going to be bypassed.
Away we go and hooooof up to Carlton Cole. What a surprise. Anyway, when we got it there appeared to be
space all over the place, especially for Nathaniel Clyne who was up against
Enner Valencia who obviously didn’t
fancy tracking back one bit. Mané and
Elia were looking really lively up front and it was looking very
promising. Elia tried to play a bal into
the box which was clearly blocked by a hand but the referee Craig Pawson
decided that having your hand down by your knee is a usual place for a hand to
be so he doesn’t give it.
From a Clyne bust down the right the ball found
Davis who fed it in to Mané who just ran directly at the goal. He looked to have overrun it but dinked it
over Adrian and jenkinson got in to clear off the line before Elia came sliding
in. Elia has our next effort on goal
when he timed his run superbly to pick up a Big Vic ball, cut in past jenkinson
and then hit it right footed but wide of the far post. There’s another chance straight afterwards as
Alex Song pisses about with the ball and loses it to Elia who knocks to Pellwho
tees up Mané who tries a side footed from the edge of the box but it doesn’t
come back in enough and goes wide.
As we approach half time there’s a rare West Ham
attack down the left and when the cross comes in, José throws himself in to
block, the ball hits his hand and it’s a free kick. Not only that but it’s a yellow card from the
wanker with the whistle. There’s
consistency for you. We clear the free
kick and Steve Davis exchanges passes with Big Vic before hitting a shot from
20 yards which is deflected wide by Tomkins.
It’s a great block and it moves about 10 yards sideways but Pawson and
the linesman don’t see it and give a goal kick which is fucking ridiculous.
The half time interval sees reluctant left winger
Enner Valencia replaced with Matt Jarvis and the first action sees Maya win a
header, just before Carlton Cole steams in and kicks him in the face. I don’t actually think he meant it but Maya’s
having a black eye sorted out for a couple of minutes.
As we know, Graziano is having a mare in front of
goal at the moment and we get another example as Mané makes ground down the
right and plays it in first time for Pellè to harmlessly scoop it straight to
the keeper. Jarvis leaves Fonte on his
arse and maked a decent run down the left, eventually teeing up Downing to
hammer in a shot which id deflected over the bar by Gardos. Before the corner is taken, Fat Sam plays the
opportunism card and throws on Andy Carroll for Sakho and his next substitution
isn’t far around the corner.
From the next clearance, Kouyate picks the ball up
and knocks it back to Arrian. It’s a bit
casual but he’s got plenty of time to put his foot through it in time honoured
Fat Sam fashion but with mane approaching he decides to take him on, as you do. With a shit first touch he ends up with mane in
between him and the ball on the edge of the box. They’re both facing away from the goal but
Adrian dives on the ball before Mané can shoot or lay it off and even this
penis of a referee has no choice but to send him off. Cue lots of arguing whilst Fat Sam readies
Jussi Jaaskenlainen and takes off Carlton Cole.
Ronals takes the opportunity to throw on Dusan Tadic for Eljero Elia who
has faded badly in the second half.
The time to take advantage in this situation is
straight away of course, before West Ham can reorganize cos you know they’re going
to put 9 men behind the ball from now on but we try a clever free kick where we
screen the ball with two player and Tadic’ strike hits the wall and goes for a
corner.
JWP comes on for Harrison Reed who has been
excellent but it gives us more attacking guile I suppose but it was Mané again
who fed Pellè who took a good touch round a defender before driving over the
bar from the edge of the box. JWP then
picks out a lovely cross from the left to pick out Tadic in acres at the far
post but all it takes is a shit first touch for you to suddenly have no time at
all and that’s what happened.
On came Djuricic to try and win it but it was Sadio
Mané who came off which was a shock to me.
I’d have taken off Steve Davis or even Pellè before Manè who was
certainly looking our most likely source for a goal. The new man was quickly involved though and
fed a good ball into Clyney in the box who fed it on to Tadic but his floated ‘nothing’
cross summed up all that was hopeful rather than purposeful about our
attacking. My outburst of ‘just hit the
fucking thing for fucks sake’ is probably not a great thing to have said in the
Family Stand and I apologise if your kid was in earshot. I think most kids would understand though
that he should have fucking hit it.
Tadic does my head in a minute later when he finds
himself in the penalty are and facing the wrong way after a great cross from
Big Vic – he should lay it back for Maya to shoot but instead he twists and
turns and twists again and then loses it.
It’s not happening – we win a corner and JWP swings it in and Maya gets
up in front of Jaaskeleinen and heads it over the bar.
As we reach 88 minutes the extra time board goes up
and I’m seriously expecting 8 or 9 minutes and instead we get 5. You are taking the piss. In the five minutes we have three more
chances. Firstly Fonte cuts in from the
right and drills in a left footed strike which the keeper sprawls and saves. Tadic finally does something right and gets
in a great low cross from the right.
Pellè throws himself at it and it’s the sort of chance he normally
buries but not at the moment as it flicks off the defender for another corner. The final chance falls to Tadic who jinks and
gets away a good right footed effort from the edge of the box but Jaaskeleinen
again defies his zimmer frame and throws himself in the way again. Bastard.
The referee Craig Pawson obviously just wanted to get off
the pitch. If you are being miserly with
the time in the second half we had the injury to Yoshida which was 2 minutes,
the sending off which was another two and then 5 substitutions at 30 seconds
each so that’s 6 and a half anyway before any of the West Ham timewasting so it
should have been 8 minutes extra at least
Then you had the timewasting in injury time which wasn’t added and I
don’t reckon he even played the 5 that were shown. If he’d added the correct amount of time for
all the West Ham timewasting we’d still be playing now… and we probably still
wouldn’t have fucking scored. This is
not West Ham’s fault as they did what they had to do once Adrian had been sent
off but the refereeing was fucking atrocious on that issue and many others.
Fresh from having accused another team of playing long ball
tactics, Fat Sam sent his team out to park the bus and just launch it
long, What was it – “no one’s a more
sophisticated manager than me’. He was
on legendary form afterwards, saying that Mané fouled the keeper and he would
be appealing – good luck with that one mate.
Regardless of the sending off and the injury to Carroll (who was a
virtual passenger for the last 15 minutes) – they came for a point and a 0-0
right from the start – same as they do every year. It’s just frustrating that we didn’t break
them down and to be honest, didn’t look like breaking them down. Fat Sam is what he is and he’ll never
change. Everyone knows this apart from
the man himself it appears.
Sophisticated my arse.
I think the Swansea loss was praying on Ronald Koeman’s mind
a bit. In that game he took off a
defensive midfielder and we lost the game.
I can’t get my head around the last substitution – Mané was going to be
dangerous until the final whistle and with 9 fit men, West Ham were no threat s
why not take Steven Davis off, put Tadic in midfield and bring Djuricic on?
The positive way of looking at this is that we are better
away from home at the moment and we are still 4th in the
league. Everyone is closing up for sure
but this result is in no way terminal to our chances of qualifying for
Europe. The ten days off that we have
now should be good for getting Graziano rested and getting Morgan and Toby
fit. What’s our next game? Liverpool at home which is going to be odd as
we’ll get 90 minutes of abuse being directed at the Liverpool bench where
Lovren and Lallana will be sat. It’s
going to be tough to applaud Sir Rickie and give shite to the other two but I
think they’ll know what’s directed at who.
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