At the start of the season, West Ham’s ambitions would have been to build on last season’s 10th place and maybe even push for the Europa League. After a start which was plagued with injuries, the Hammers found themselves in the bottom three and targets drastically changed – survival was the key.
Now that we are looking like we will be safe after an unprecedented four wins out of four in February, should that target be changing? We’ve got Andy Carroll back for (hopefully!) the remainder of the season, and it does look like we can push on now and keep the momentum going.
We do have a few tough fixtures left now. Everton, Liverpool, Arsenal, Manchester United, Manchester City and Spurs are all sides we still have to play and realistically I wouldn’t see us getting many points from those games. However, we also have Hull City, Sunderland and West Bromwich Albion to go which are all looking very winnable!
I would say that primarily getting to that magic 38/40 points should remain our first priority, and only after that target has been reached should we reassess the situation. From then, the team have nothing to lose by going for everything they can, but I personally would keep the target as safety for now. And come next season, let’s push on even further – surely we can’t have that much bad luck two seasons in a row?!
What do you think our strategy for the rest of the season should be? Leave a comment or tweet me at @alwaysintune.
Lets get the money sorted first, staying in the premier league is paramount for the income stream. In 3-5 years time, will see us in the new stadium and hopefully dept free. Then and only then can we look at pushing to get into Europe. So often we see teams in trouble because they have pushed for Europe with out the depth of squad needed.
I think we have the right team of people now running this great club. They have the club at heart, and i believe they will do there best for us. Long may it continue……..
Yeh, safety first, then any other ideas later. But the injury issue is not anything new. We’ve been plagued with injuries as far back as I can remember (a lot of years). The staff have been changed, the training and fitness methods modernised, but it doesn’t go away. I believe it’s something about the Chadwell Heath training facilities (overly hard ground, or something) that makes our guys more injury prone. I know a year or so ago there was talk of a new facility, but I guess it got lost in the financial cutbacks. So until we do get new facilities (Olympic stadium?) we’ll continue to be hit by the injuries and not reach the heights we should be. I’m not on the inside, but after this season of near disaster it really has to be addressed urgently.
I think we need to get safe first then start playing some of the young boys and start planning for next year once we have 40 points we have nothing to play for this year no better time to start.
We did manage to make a mess of this season what with a still too small squad and too many injuries! When fit our first team is a match for nearly anyone but despite the signing of downing we are still woefully short of quality in the first team and even shorter throughout the squad. It is frightening to think that the mega rich clubs spend more millions on squad players than we can afford on first team players. Having said that if we can get 4-5 players in for about 25-30mill next season then I should be happy with the progress we are making.
Hmmm well at the start of the season we would have said mid table plus a good go at a cup run. Maybe Europa league if we were lucky. No chance of cup run now of course and we would need to maintain our current form for an unrealistically long time to have a chance of Europe so I think its a case of avoiding getting dragged back down and aiming for mid table respectability and look forward to next year. Personally I think it was right to prioritise survival over cups this year. At the point that decision was made, it made sense. Oh well as Kenny Logan said …whats another year!
Just get through this season and stay up , Sam slipped up big time this year , he has made some duff signings since becoming manager, let’s hope we get a quality back up striker . Not another Maiga