NPC Match 31 - West Ham 1 Southampton 1

Before he was Fat Sam....

Off to play West Ham at the Boleyn Ground on a Tuesday night for possibly the last time.  West Ham are now owned by the Gold and Sullivan Dildo Factory who are intent on moving the club to the Virtually Free Olympic Stadium in time for next season.  Their fans don’t want that but when has what the fans want mattered.  If they do move to the Olympic Stadium and if Fat Sam is still manager then the ball is only going to be in play for about 5 minutes of the 90 with all the time that will be spent getting it back when it’s bouncing down the athletics track after another hooooof forward.  Better get permission to use the multi-ball system.

In other news since the weekend, The Skates have announced they are applying for administration, as if they weren’t in it already.  If the courts accept, the Skates will be able to pay the leccy bill and pay Tal Ben Haim his £38k a week and all the other bills they’ve racked up since their last administration, all those years ago.  I don’t see what difference this makes as they’re currently not paying the 20p in the £1 they agreed last time and after this administration will probably not be paying the 4p in the £1.  The courts will just agree a new lower figure for them not to pay.

Nigel has obviously been reading his ‘Positive Management’ handbook again and not named a keeper on the bench which just gives me the shits.  If you want to be positive then don’t put a defender on the bench – we can cover that as Corky, Deano and even Morgan can play in defence.  Is Frazer any good in goal?  The whole 16 is the same as were on duty against Burnley and I guess the only question was would Punch get a start in view of Guly’s fairly regular Away Day Disappearing Act.

So it’s 1st v 2nd and interesting to see who makes the faster start.  Within 40 seconds we know the answer to that one as Foxy and Jos combine to get in each others way when trying to head clear thee first hoof forward of the evening and the ball falls to Vaz Te who hammers in a shot from the edge of the box and Superkelv has to be alert to make an excellent tip round the post.  Now we’ve woken up and get a foothold but the next chance is also dressed in Claret and Blue as Faye heads down a corner and following a Superkelv spill and a bit of a scramble, Reid manages to scoop it over the bar when it looked easier to score.

There’s another let off as the ball appears to Hooiveld on the hand – in fact there’s no ‘appears’ about it, it’s a definite hand ball and we’ve got away with one there as the big man almost catches it one handed before hiding his hand behind his head with perfect comic timing.  Despite our best efforts, we reach the 18 minute mark unscathed and then it all kicks off as Noble has a little dive in the box in the vicinity of Billy Sharp and the ref gives a penalty.  Billy’s not impressed and voices a few opinions to Noble, causing narky ex-Skate Matt Taylor, all tats, stupidity and attitude to get involved when it’s nothing whatsoever to do with him.   He has a push at Billy’s face and makes it easy for the ref as Billy goes down in a fashion which is a bit too Adam El-Abd for my liking.  After it’s all sorted and the thick Skate has walked off, Mark Noble takes his ill gotten gains and converts the penalty as Superkelv goes the wrong way.  So, on the debit side we are 1-0 down, on the credit side we have 70 minutes against 10 men.

Fat Sam takes off midfielder Collison and brings on a replacement left back and let’s just say it’s obvious we’re going to spend most of the next 70 minutes waiting for the ball to return to earth.  Slowly but surely we begin to assert ourselves and really should have been level on 35 minutes as Green makes a bollocks of an Adam Lallana shot from the edge of the box and fumbles it out to Sharp who manages to hit it straight at the prostrate Green instead of at the big wide open thing with a net on it.  Aside from the obvious benefit of equalizing, it would have been great to see the reaction if the villain of the piece had scored.

The remaining 10 minutes of the first half are one-way traffic towards Robert Green and if West Ham can’t hoof the ball then they hoof the player and from one of many free kicks in their half, Sir Rickie clears the wall and just about clears the post as well.  Green showed up well when he pulled off a superb save to deny Sir Rickie after a Lallana shot had been blocked into his path.  Why can’t Green play like he did for England in the World Cup when he was shite.  The last action of the first half is a deserved booking for Lallana for having a Noble in the West Ham box when he’s obviously not as good at it.  Half time and 1-0 down.

The second half starts with 10 minutes of nothing and Nigel has had enough and Guly is out of here to be replaced by Jason Puncheon who immediately makes a difference as Nigel tries to stretch West Ham out by trying the alien left footer on the left, right footer on the right ploy.  Our next chance was set up by Adam Lallana but he made the mistake of passing to Jack Cork who has taken over from Morgan as the midfielder least likely to score.  Needless to say – he didn’t score.

It’s all Saints as Punch has a shot deflected wide and Adam fires a shot just over.  Fat Sam decides to freshen up his side with Nicky Maynard (who has already won two games against Saints this season) coming on in place of Carlton Cole as the striker in the 8-hoof-1 formation that West Ham are now playing.  They re-establish their number of ex-Skates by bringing on Gary O’Neil in place of Vaz Te.

Saints are still threatening and in the 70th minute comes the moment we’ve been waiting for as Foxy slung in yet another free kick onto the head of Sir Rickie who headed it down to where the lurking Big Jos tooka  touch before poking it under Green and into the net for 1-1.

Nigel pulls a strange one a few minutes later as our reserve keeper has to come off with what looks like a hamstring injury to be replaced by Connolly who goes into midfield with Corky dropping to right back.... hmmmmm, not sure about that one.  Turns out that Nigel wasn’t sure either as five minutes later Deano came on for Sharp and we looked like a balanced side again.

To be honest, there weren’t many chances in the last ten minutes with Maynard fastening onto a Big Jos slip and forcing Superkelv to tip over and Saints winning a couple of corners but doing nothing with them aside from giving Rob Green catching practice.  Final whistle – all over.

Though we played 70 minutes against 10 men, I’m happy with a point.  In the same way that at the start of the season, I’d have snapped your arm off for 2nd place at this stage, I would have taken a point at the start of this game.  Nigel is of a similar mind in his post match interview mentioning that the referee had an ‘interesting’ day and also mentioning West Ham’s record of having dodgy penalties awarded to them at home, mentioning the two against Forest a couple of weeks back. From memory – in their last 3 home games, West Ham have had 3 penalties – all dodgy and scored another goal when they assaulted the goalkeeper first.  Still, everything goes against them, which is what you’d think if you listened to Fat Sam.

Fat Sam was his usual one eyed self, saying that the ref was wrong to send off Taylor for a mere shove in the chest and wrong not to give them a penalty for handball.  Maybe so on the handball but Sam mysteriously left out that the ref was also wrong in West Ham’s favour when he didn’t give us a penalty in the second half and wrong big time when he fell for Noble’s dive to give the penalty which the Hammers scored from.  Of course, in Fat Sam world, the sending off started with Billy’s reaction to the shove by the Skate.  The chain of events of course started with Noble diving.  If Noble doesn’t dive, the ref doesn’t give a pen, there is no fracas and Taylor probably doesn’t feel compelled to prove how hard he is by getting involved in something which has nothing to do with him.  Also, Fat Sam’s teams don’t just hoof the ball forward.... stop laughing.... no they don’t and he gets really annoyed if you infer that they do.  Hoooooof!

There is an incredible media bias towards West Ham in any reports you’ll read about this game (apart from this one) as the mainstream media all seem to be West Ham or Spurs fans..  Plucky 10 man West Ham and all that etc.  Then you get that Moose idiot from talkSHITE who is demanding answers about “getting a fellow pro sent off” from Billy Sharp via Twitter.  I’m sorry mate, Alan Brazil treats you like you’re an idiot on the radio and you obviously are.  Why should anyone answer to you? Here’s some questions for you... Why does Matt Taylor get involved when it has nothing to do with him?  Why does Mark Noble dive in the first place?  I demand that you reply... only I don’t demand anything because I’m not a prick, not all the time anyway.

Hammers fans have obviously been brought up on decent football which they are never going to get under Fat Sam but will probably forgive it if they go up which they probably will and should do, given the Premiership squad they have.  What then in the Prem?  Constant hoof accompanied by lower mid table and relegation zone.  Maybe we’ll be the same but at least we’ll be trying to pass the ball on the grass.

As we managed to get ourselves knocked out of the FA Cup, we have another league game on Saturday at home to Derby who are showing exceedingly average form at the moment making it an ideal opportunity for another 3 points in the quest for the Holy Grail.

Where did he push him Sam ?