Just what is going wrong with West Ham?

Well the answer to this question is obvious…everything. We can’t score, we have players who are severely underperforming and our next 3 fixtures (Spurs away, Manchester City home and Swansea City away) are all pretty much write-offs.

Firstly the decision from the club to put all our eggs in the Andy Carroll basket has back-fired spectacularly; he’s out for another 5-8 weeks and by the time he returns we will be firmly in the midsts of yet another relegation battle.

Regular readers of my articles will know that I’ve always been firmly behind Sam Allardyce; I think he’s done a tremendous job in getting promotion in his 1st season and keeping us up in his 2^nd thus far I haven’t really felt the need to criticise him, but I do now. The decision to spend 6.5 million on Stewart Downing was ill-advised to say the least; I do think he was a good signing but it was obvious to everyone that a new striker was the priority, we could’ve done without Downing but a new striker was vital given Carroll’s poor injury record in recent years. Scrambling around for free agent strikers’ reeks of desperation, the re-signing of Carlton Cole is embarrassing, the signing of Mladen Petric was desperate, all of this could’ve been avoided if Sam had seen sense that a new striker was far more important than a winger we could’ve ultimately done without.

At the moment every member of our first team squad is banging on about ‘how the goals will come’ and ‘how everyone needs to take responsibility and step up’ these weak clichés aren’t going to solve anything; they are just meaningless words. In my opinion it’s time for Sam to wield the axe; and the 3 that need dropping are Modibo Magia, Matt Jarvis and el capitano himself Kevin Nolan; these 3 players have something in common…they all played well in the opening day victory over Cardiff City and since then have contributed absolutely nothing. With Joey Cole and Stewart Downing returning from injury surely that means the underperforming duo in Jarvis and Nolan are on borrowed time? (Actually could any of us really see Nolan getting dropped whatever the circumstance?) As for Maiga even a cardboard cut-out of Andy Carroll would be more effective.

Thus far this season the only real bright spot has been the sensational form of Ravel Morrison who is showing with every game exactly why he should be in the next England squad and why in my opinion he should step into Nolan’s ‘illustrious’ boots.

Unfortunately this season looks like it’s going to be yet another epic battle to escape the clutches of relegation and I fear until Sam starts to wield the axe on some of his underperforming ‘stars’ things will get a lot worse before they get any better.