West Ham didn’t exactly put on the most convincing of displays against Hull City this weekend – yet we’ve managed to beat them by three goals to stay within four points of a Champions League place.
It’s not a bad days work for West Ham, even if it wasn’t, admittedly, a performance worth writing home about. The passing was poor, the players were lethargic, and a Hull team who barely scraped together enough players to field a full side looked far more likely to score in the first-half. However, there was something satisfying about our second half performance against a hapless Hull City – and it turns out that we can still get three points even when we are clearly not playing anywhere near as well as we should be.
After all, let’s be honest – that first-half was dire. The players looked absolutely shattered after having to play for something like 400 hours on Tuesday night. Some of the players looked like a shadow of their professional selves: Stewart Downing was barely involved in the first-half, Alex Song was prolific with his delivery of the ball directly to the Hull players, and Mark Noble was playing as if he had been concussed on Tuesday and no one had noticed as of yet.
The fans booed off the team after a poor first-half showing—because after all, there’s nothing like a piss-poor display against Hull to serve as a motivator for booing—and it felt worryingly like last season’s team had turned up to play.
Fortunately, the second-half brought with it goals, if not necessarily great football.
The game finally opened up around the 49th minute when Andy Carroll scored, and it made for even more misery for Hull as James Chester dislocated his shoulder and added to their already extensive list of injured players. From there, the game belonged to West Ham. Morgan Amalfitano scored to increase our lead, and Stewart Downing connected to an absolutely perfect Alex Song pass to score our third. Winston Reid made for a good substitution and actually brought some lovely flair to the game and — all being said – we were unlucky not to have scored four or five by the final whistle.
It was a much-needed victory, but it must be acknowledged that it was won without moving too far out of first gear. West Ham did what was needed to be done against a floundering Hull, but we must pull together a stronger showing by the time we head to Anfield to play an inspired and resurgent Liverpool. Mark Noble has not recovered his fitness after his recent injury, and Joey O’Brien seems like a nice person, but he’s not really a central defender, is he?
Against Hull, we got the job done and walked off the pitch with an increased goal difference and a much needed (and respected) three points – but we must work hard to ensure the sloppy first half football we saw stays dead and buried for our next few games – which include matches against Liverpool, Manchester United, Southampton, Tottenham, Chelsea and Arsenal.
Don’t worry, I’m sure it’ll be fine.
The first half was worst than dire given the problems that Hull have.This was nothing to do with tiredness of the Hammers team and everything to with bfs reverting to his hoofing up to Carroll tactics with Nolan,ostensibly a mid-fielder goal hanging in advance of Carroll. When Hull broke where was Nolan? Yards away from the action leaving a not yet fit Song and Nobes overrun and leaving the team wholly dependant on our wonderful defence to stem the attacking hordes. To add insult to injury bfs then goes public to criticise tippy tappy football. You could not make it up! Tippy tappy football is performed by Chelsea,Arsenal,Southampton,the Manchester pair etc Bfs wouldn’t know that style if it bit him on the bum. The press then praise him for skill in changing to the diamond formation with Nolan providing at least a modicum of support to our hard pressed midfield. What a change,they even started to play some tippy tappy which meant finding their passes and runners with the expected result. That man takes us all for fools but for how long?