It early December, West Ham United have been through a lot in the year 2012. We had times of being at the summit of the Championship to falling down into the Play-Offs. From winning the tie at Wembley with Ricardo Vaz Te’s strike, to Nolan scoring pivotal goals back in the Premier League to where we were at the end of November. The first eleven months have been a slog, and tough nervy times, but yesterday, we picked up the best result we have seen in 2012, and probably the best result we will have in 2012, unless we can do something quite unbelievable in the remaining month over either Liverpool, West Bromwich Albion, Everton, Arsenal or Reading.
West Ham United came into this highly charged London derby with a turbulent week, beaten by Tottenham Hotspurs at White Hart Lane and by Manchester United at Old Trafford was bad enough, but to add the problems that we as a proud club had to deal with, off field problems were mounting. Though in contrast to Chelsea, our week was less worrying on field. As we are all aware, the recent sacking of Di Matteo and the following arrival of Rafael Benitez has begun a new reign at Chelsea, with two points from two games and no goals, Chelsea needed a win.
Nevertheless, they couldn’t take the win having taken a one nil lead into half time. The performance in the first half from West Ham was tepid; the Hammers never started the game. They were bright for the first few exchanges, but in overall quite toothless and if it hadn’t been for some poor finishing from Fernando Torres, it could have been 3 or 4 nil for the visitors by half time. The biggest frustration for me was Gary O’Neil. I am one O’Neil’s few and biggest fans, I really like what he does when he is in the middle of the park, he can play the ball around and when he is in the correct temperament he can hold onto the ball well. I wrote at the end of last year trying to give him the acclaim of the unofficial hammer of the year because without what he gave us in the last few months of the Championship season, we may have never been promoted. Although he isn’t a winger, he lacks pace and the quality to beat defenders, especially as good as Ashley Cole.
Though in the second half we quite frankly destroyed Chelsea. West Ham were bright, positive and up for the fight that a London derby brings and had it not been for the energy and strength that was injected through the methodical change of Diame, we may have never made an impact in the game. He was so strong, never gave up, he scored one and put Ashley Cole under immense pressure to force a mistake that led to the third.
The result was outstanding, to beat one of our local rivals, who are Champions of Europe, as the travelling blues pointed out many times. I don’t think that there is a comparable result to this in the year of 2012, maybe the win over Brighton where we thrashed the seagulls 6 nil, but all in all, I would easily say that our win over Chelsea was the result of the year.
