Who is to blame?

Sunday was a poor day for West Ham United. Sending a group of kids out to be slaughtered on national TV in some sort of twisted Big Sam Allardyce version of the Hunger Games was one of the low points of the season so far. They may as well have played the sound of canons every time Forest scored.

How did it go so wrong? Are Big Sam’s ‘tactics’ to blame, or was it simply that our young team was simply not ready to face the big boys of the Championship (bodes well for our future, doesn’t it?) Does the blame lie at the feet of Stewart Downing, Modibo Maiga, and Matt Jarvis, or is everyone equally at fault? And, given our injuries, could we have actually done anything different for the Forest game?

Big Sam said before the game that the FA Cup was not a priority, and he was right—it isn’t. We currently have 14 available players from our squad of 25. Those 14 players would have to play three games in seven days, including a cup semi-final and crucial six-pointer against Cardiff City.

We have enough on our plates right now, and can barely field a team for our league games, much less two concurrent cup competitions. I’m sorry it’s not something ‘important’ like European football distracting us from the FA Cup, Mr. Lineker, but our relegation fight is our priority right now—and I fully support that.

Where I feel let down is by how atrocious that game was.

The formation against Forest was certainly not one particularly suited for the game. Maiga, one of the few senior players on the pitch, was largely anonymous. Jarvis and Downing were both too deep to consistently contribute to and inspire an attacking game of football. The defense seemed completely exposed at all times. Big Sam seemed uninterested in the first half – which, interestingly, was the half in which we were only 1-0 down from a sloppy penalty.

I appreciate the effort put in by the “U-21s” during this baptism of fire, and cannot imagine it was easy to have been out there feeling the wrath of disappointment normally reserved for and aimed at our senior team, but I find myself surprised by the lack of determination to shine from them.

This was a massive opportunity for the younger players to get noticed, and move up in their career—and very few of them took it. I won’t criticize individual performances, but will say that as a whole very few players looked likely to join Ravel Morrison in the first team. Even though he was off the pace (perhaps there was truth to the groin injury thing) Morrison was still leaps and bounds ahead of some of his older teammates.

There’s now the worry that such a result will be demotivating for the team, but it has to be looked at as a learning experience. We put our ‘B’ team in the Capitol One Cup, and we’re now in the Semi-Final. There was opportunity for another ‘B’ side to have a cup run, and although that result was awful, it was nice to see the players care about the result, with many of the youngsters tweeting apologies and thanks to the fans online.

When’s the last time we heard that from the first team?

I was so excited to see a new crop of players get a chance to play, just to see something different—but the truth is, it wasn’t much different from what we normally see week in and week out – it just had a heavier score line. The tactics of the game let us down, but we do not have the depth of squad to enable us to participate in multiple competitions while we fight for our lives in the Premier League.

Of course, those allowed the biggest disappointment are the fans who bought tickets for the game before it was apparent that it was one we would have to put the kids out for, and it would be a nice goodwill gesture for the club to give back to those fans—I know of a nice £100,000 that’s recently become available that we could dip into to fund it.

What do you think – was Sam wrong to put the kids out? If he was, what would you have done instead? Were you hoping to see something different from the youngsters, and did any impress for you? Let us know below.