So the defeat at Aston Villa on Sunday…that was about as ugly as it gets…I’ve been a keen defender of Sam Allardyce since he rocked up at the Boleyn Ground. After all he took us up at the first time of asking which in my humble opinion isn’t as easy as everyone seems to think; just ask fans of Wolverhampton Wanderers, Bolton Wanderers and Blackburn Rovers; three clubs that went down are desperate to get back and none of them in my humble opinion will even make the play-offs.
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Sam has thus far steered us to 11th in the league with a dozen games to go and a decent seven point gap from the dreaded bottom 3. However the performance at Villa was literally like watching Stoke at their worst or best depending on how you view that sort of football.
No Hammers fan can make head nor tale of the tactics that were employed at Villa Park, ultra negative, hoofball I think adequately sum it up. I think most fans would agree there has been a mix of footy played this season and this particular West Ham side does not having one distinguishable style and thus far its served us well in our first season back amongst the elite.
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I must say I don’t understand why winning games and playing good football are seen to be so mutually exclusive, we possess good footballers at the club Joe Cole, Mohamed Diame and Mark Noble who all started the abomination at Aston Villa are all technically sound, surely they can knock the ball about without hoofing it up to Andy Carroll? Now I’m not going to prattle on about the ‘West Ham way’ which whilst I believe to be a beautiful and noble footballing philosophy has failed to provide any real and tangible success since the 1980 FA cup…I will say that the performance at Villa wasn’t acceptable and that perhaps Sam needs to have a bit more faith in the ability of the players at his disposal to pass the ball.
Sam’s contract is up in the summer…and if he wishes to continue in the Hammers hot seat perhaps a little more emphasis should be placed on style, mixing it is fine, playing hoofball against a side in the bottom three devoid of all confidence is not.
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I hate the hoofball but you’re ignoring the fact that we did try to pass it around a bit at Villa and barely a single pass found its target. In fact our passing mainly set up Villa counter attacks. All of Joe Cole, Mohamed Diame and Mark Noble were guilty of this and you can throw in Taylor, Nolan, Tomkins and even Winston Reid as well. We were technically very very poor and you can’t hide it. I hope they’re practising their passing techniques on the beach in Dubai!
spot on. lack of technically gifted players. … di canio or carroll? jarvis or devonshire? noble or bishop? dicks or taylor? sinclair or vaz te? nolan or lampard? rio or collins? … if we can spend 15m on jarvis and maiga and entertain 12m on carroll its not a lack of money thats our problem..
sorry fat sam only knows one way to play hoof ball glad when he goes.
You might say that BFS needs to put more faith in the players but the Villa game was a shocker. If there were three players who needed a swift kick in the nuts it would have to be Noble,Carlton & Jussi. Noble is so woefully short of pace, it’s alarming. He does not read the game properly & the rest of the players in the league know it. He gets the ball & they’re on him like a shot every time, forcing the ball to be played backwards.
Carlton should be ashamed of himself for failing to head that free kick clear. He stood in the wall with his chin on his chest & let the ball brush the side of his head on the way into the net. As for Jussi, he gave up half way accross the goal line. I thought that keepers were supposed to dive for the ball not collapse in a heap on the ground. Had he gone full stretch then he would’ve got a hand to it. The ball he spilled in the first couple of minutes should have resulted in a goal. I hope that we’re better against the ‘Spuds’.