Premier League Match 8 - West Ham 4 Southampton 1

Nicola... I have a cunning plan

A return from international break sees us face a trip to the Boleyn Ground to play West Ham who are flying way having hoofed their way to 3 wins already which even allowing for a favourable fixture list, is a brilliant start for a newly promoted club.  I’ve always liked the Boleyn so for this and many other reasons, I hope they get knocked back regarding the Olympic Stadium and continue to play here next season.  I can’t quite get my head round a stadium that showed all that was good about British sport in 2012, showing Fat Sam’s charges hoofing the ball into the Statford Stratosphere and waiting for it to come down, watched by The Dildo boys as they count their pile of money from not having to build a new ground.

I’m quite confident about this game as we did well against them last year and I don’t see a real reason why we can’t do well this year.  I predict a 2-1 win with goals by Sir Rickie and Mayuka.  This prediction was lodged in my head until about 10 minutes before the kick off when I saw that neither were playing.  Oh for fuck’s sake, he’s done it again.  For the second time in a week (England in Poland being the other) I’ve seen the starting line up and known that we were going to be shite.  Artur Boruc was making his debut and Gazza wasn’t even on the bench so I guess he’s injured.  Danny Fox wasn’t in the 18 so Maya was at left back and Big Jos partnered Jose in the middle.  Hang on, why are we playing a centre back out of position at left back?  Where’s Luke Shaw or even Ryan Dickson?  The midfield three were Morgan, Steve Davis and Lallana and up front providing our goal threat were three players who have not scored this season, Punch, J-Rod and Guly.  I only boiled over when I heard that Sir Rickie was on the bench and not injured.  I fucking give up.  West Ham have a few new players from last year, the most obvious being Andy Carroll up front who could have been built in a lab to fit into Fat Sam’s style of play.  In midfield they have Diame who they signed from Wigan who is another monster of player fitting into the ‘brick shithouse’ category.

The first half can be summed up quite quickly in that it was very flat and dull.  If anything, Saints were the better side with a snap shot from J-Rod going just wide.  Artur Boruc remained relatively untroubled in goal and for us, it’s nice to go 45 minutes without letting in a goal.  West Ham were predictably hoooooofing it up to Carroll but aren’t getting players around him so even if he won it, we were picking up the loose ball with Lallana, Steven Davis and Morgan all showing up well in midfield.  West Ham were booed off and happy days, so far.

Our story really begins at the start of the second half when having shackled the focal point of all of West Ham’s attacking in the first half, it must be assumed that the hooooof up to Carroll would have to be dealt with again but from the first one of the second half it’s a free kick to West Ham as Big Jos and the Big Jessie bang heads.  The decision could easily have been given either way really but it goes to West Ham.  Noble floats it into the box in a kind of bread-and-butter dead straight lob into the box kind of way and it’s missed by Fonte and Hooiveld, it bounces about 6 yards out and Boruc is distracted by Collins run and allows it to just bounce past him and straight into the net.  As goals go, it’s an absolutely shit one..

We kick off and within a minute, Guly has given Yoshida a hospital pass which he’s lost in the tackle to send Benayoun away down the right wing all on his own.  His hard and low cross shot is parried by Boruc, past Fonte who seems to give up on it and wave it past, totally unaware that Nolan is behind him, two yards out with an open goal thus completing the 2 goals in 2 minutes trick which we have managed in every away game so far.  I shout swearwords very loudly which is ok as I’m walking my dog round a cemetery with Dave Merrington in my ear and the only others within earshot have been dead for 96 years.  Still, we still have the Cunning Plan up our sleeves of Sir Rickie on the bench to bring on to win the game for us after we’ve kept it tight.  Oh.

Having torn my headphones out of my ears in a fit of temper when the second goal went in, I’m fully reconnected in time to hear J-Rod wriggle past Collins and feed Lallana who turned and smashed it past Jaaskeleinen from the edge of the box.  Game back on again and Nigel wastes no time in removing J-Rod and Punch and bringing on Sir Rickie and Mayuka.  Two minutes later and we’ve got a head of steam up and Collins needlessly trips Lallana on the edge of the box to give us a free kick.  Sir Rickie chips in, Jaaskeleinen stands feet planted.... and the ball just floats narrowly over the bar.  Still, we’re now playing better and the big man is on the pitch, what can possibly go wrong?

Andy Carroll has had his fitness issues for a couple of seasons and he’s clearly getting tired now as rather than compete for anything, he collapses in a heap any time anyone comes near him which is embarrassing for a 6 foot 4 inch centre forward.  Get up you wanker.  From one such clash he falls down like he’s been hit by a bus rather than brushed by a Big Dutchman and the ref buys it and gives West Ham another free kick from the sort of 45 yard range where Mark Noble was deadly from a bit earlier.  In it comes and it’s half cleared and is travelling away from the goal when Jose appears to grab a handful of Carroll’s hair and throw him on the ground.  I know he’s a wanker who falls over a lot but this is one of the most stupid challenges I’ve ever seen in my life – penalty.  I’ve seen it reported that the penalty was for handball but even if it was, hair-pull wrestling throws don’t go down too well with referees or hopefully, managers who hand out fines for stupidity.  Up steps Noble for the second goal that we’ve made him work really hard for, bang, Boruc the wrong way, 3-1 and any chance of a comeback completely gone. 

You think that it can’t get any worse but with us in away games it certainly can and as the game ticks down, Maiga, the big powerful sub gets the ball on the right and none of Yoshida, Fonte and Hooiveld cover themselves in glory as he’s allowed to cut in and curl a left footed strike in off the far post.  Brilliant goal but what a load of crap from us.

And so the game ended and we got twatted.  Harsh scoreline or not, we went to West Ham, only defended for 45 minutes and didn’t create more than three chances all game.  The bottom line is that we didn’t defend well enough and we didn’t attack well enough, therefore, we were pretty shit and deserved to get nothing from a game we should have been getting something out of.

The cunning plan to leave Sir Rickie out and bring him on to win the game is quite clearly so lacking in cunning that even the great Baldrick himself wouldn’t have been stupid enough to consider it.  That means that it’s pretty bloody stupid.  We have one player who has in any way proven that he can be a regular scorer in the Premier League and we leave him on the bench.  In my book, that is stupid.  As I’ve said before, we are less of side with Sir Rickie not in the team and have been for 3 years and guess what, this will continue to be the case until he leaves or retires.  It seems to me like Nigel is over thinking things when football is a simple game.  You’re more likely to score if your main goal threat is on the pitch – simples (fucking Meerkats).  Also, in our 8 games so far, we threw leads against Man United and Fulham after Sir Rickie got taken off – we could do with those 5 points now.  I guess J-Rod was preferred because he’s quicker which in Nigel’s mind at some point, obviously outweighed the fact that he’s not as good a player.  He might be one day but he isn’t at this moment in time.  I could understand the similar selection made at Man City because Man City are the Champions and we were going to be chasing around all game trying to get the ball back.  West Ham are not Man City and leaving Sir Rickie out suggests that we were scared of them somehow which is ridiculous.  I’m sure Nigel knows though that if you make very strange selections like this one, lose the game and you’re going to get slaughtered and deservedly so.  Of course though, it wasn’t the forwards that cost us the game though we created nothing of note up front.  Punch had a decent first half but did his usual 2^nd half fade before being subbed and Guly did nothing of note at all.  J-Rod meanwhile looked ok in general but does he ever look like scoring?

I don’t like Fat Sam and I never will – don’t like what he stands for and the way his teams play football and the stuff he comes out with in defence of things he holds dear but I can guarantee you one thing, he won’t give a flying fuck what anyone thinks if he keeps West Ham up this season - which he will.  He knows it is ALL about points on the board and anything else is secondary.  It’s also interesting to compare the shopping in the summer, bearing in mind that we were better than them last year.  Both sides needed some strength in midfield - they got Diame and we brought in Davis who is a tidy ball playing midfielder.  They needed a winger and got Jarvis, we needed the same and got Ramirez who plays in the centre.  Both sides needed a centre back - they got Collins who has a lot of Premiership experience and we got Yoshida who has no experience at playing in England... and we play him at left back, where he’s shitt.

You hear some people saying that playing good football is the most important thing but let me tell you, as a supporter of a team that plays some good football but is currently getting dicked in every away game that it really isn’t.  Fat Sam wants to get points as does Nigel but Nigel thinks the way to get points is to play like we do in the formation that we play.  Away from home that is simply not the case.  We got completely thumped 4-1 by West Ham who in the context of the Premier League, are not very good. Fair play to them for their excellent start to the season but watch them fall down the league in November and December as their fixtures get difficult.

And what is ‘good football’ anyway?  I hear that Southampton are a good footballing side but where in the good football manual does it mention about defending like clowns and conceding 3 goals per game.  The term ‘good football’ sure encompasses the ugly stuff you do without the ball, not just poncing about playing 20 passes and after all that, the opposition have 11 men in front of you – Propaganda football as Gordon Strachan used to call it.  We allegedly want to play like Barcelona who pass pass pass but guess what, they defend properly when they don’t have the ball with a proper holding midfielder and defenders who concentrate, as if they didn’t, they’d get humped every week as well.  Nigel has to adopt a more pragmatic approach, get some midfielders in the side who can put a tackle in and some defenders who are capable to concentrating for 95 minutes.  Conceding two goals straight after half time is simply scandalous having defended comfortably for 45 minutes – there is no excuse, you have to tackle everything and head everything against West Ham so what do we do… all leave it to eachother.  It’s odd that I had a pop at Roy Hodgson for his rigid approach with England but that is what is needed for us in away games, two banks of four, hard to break down, bark, bollock and bite which admittedly is hard to do with no midfielders who can tackle.

We cannot sign any new players until January and we have very few options when it comes to defenders and defensive midfielders to come into the team so all we have which may improve things is the set up of the team.  That’s down to Nigel and his coaching staff.  If we carry on conceding three goals a game until January, we’ll already be down. 

Nigel sounded gutted afterwards in the post match interview which ended with him being asked if he thought we should have gone with 2 up front at the end.  He’s responded that we play 4-3-3 and then the interview ended so you didn’t really get the context of how he meant that last answer.  On first viewing, I took it to mean that he was saying that “we play three up front” but then, I’m not a conspiracy theorist.  Others, who I assume are out there looking for little green men on a visit from Mars, took it to mean that “we play 4-3-3 because I’m told by Cortese that we have to and I can’t change it and I have to pick J-Rod because we paid a lot of money for him and I have to do what The Don says because he’s in charge and he’ll probably shoot me”.  However, explaining the Sir Rickie omission away with “we have a squad of players to use” is not an explanation that is going to wash with anyone.

Still. Next week we have a nice easy one at home to Spurs.  They’ll score three so tune in to see if we can score four.