Author: Richard Bennett

It doesn’t seem like long ago that we last faced Bournemouth. I guess that is because it wasn’t that long ago. We faced every other team in the Premier League before we met them, but just a few weeks later here we go again. At least we are spared a third meeting in a month thanks to the fact that Wigan beat them comfortably in the FA Cup third round on Wednesday night, which means that we face a trip to the north-west in round four.

The video assistant refereeing system (VAR) has been much in the news recently after it is beginning to be trialled in some FA Cup matches. When I wrote my book, Goodbye Upton Park, Hello Stratford a couple of years ago I devoted some of the pages within it to championing the VAR as so many decisions seemed to be going against us in that final season at our old ground. If the system had been in operation we may have even finished high enough to qualify for the Champions League, but seeing our performances in the lesser European competition then perhaps it was a good thing!

But no, I am strongly in favour of a system that increases the chances of eliminating errors by officials. The system isn’t perfect and won’t rectify all their mistakes, but it will help. It seems to me in this initial trial period that those people like myself who are in favour reckon it is doing a good job so far, whereas those not in favour do not. Similarly those managers who are benefiting from the decisions are in favour, and those on the receiving end are not. Our own Karren Brady came out in her Sun column most definitely against. It would be interesting to know her reaction if we were relegated by one point this season and then think back to the end of our visit to Bournemouth.

You will remember that we had three points wrapped up in the fourth minute of added on time when Bournemouth scored an offside goal that was also handball. The VAR system would have ruled out the goal (as would any sensible referee who would have done the same after the assistant raised his flag) but inexplicably the goal stood and we are now two points worse off than we would have been.

That means we go into this game five points clear of the drop zone on 25 points, and just one ahead of today’s opponents. If there was any justice then we would be on 27 and they would be on 23. Of course those in opposition to the VAR cite as one of their reasons that poor decisions even themselves out over the course of a season. Of course they do not, but in today’s game I am looking forward to the offside goal scored with an arm by the team in claret and blue that is allowed to stand.

Are you old enough to remember Saturday May 10 1980? I remember it as if it was yesterday, not almost 38 years ago! Working as an assistant manager for a Building Society at the time, and with a less than understanding manager, I had to work on that Saturday morning in Wanstead. We closed the doors at 12.00 midday and then we had to cash up before we could leave. The tills were balanced in record time and by ten past twelve I had crossed the road to Wanstead station on the central line, and was heading off to meet fellow co-blogger Geoff at Baker Street for our visit to the twin towers of Wembley.

We were in Division Two at the time and not even close enough to be pushing for promotion. Arsenal were of course where they have always been in the top tier. We didn’t have a chance did we? But at the age of 26 I experienced West Ham’s third win of the FA Cup, a trophy that meant so much at the time, unlike in the modern era, where it is totally overshadowed for financial reasons with the need for teams to concentrate on the Premier League. It is a shame, but unfortunately a fact of life that things move on.

I was ten years old when we first won the FA Cup, beating second division Preston 3-2 in 1964. This of course led to winning a European trophy the following season when we triumphed in the European Cup Winners Cup Final again at Wembley, before the hat-trick of the World Cup at Wembley a year later.

I had to wait until I was 21 before our second FA Cup win, an unremarkable game in 1975 where we beat second division Fulham (with our very own Bobby Moore in their side). So by 1980, when we won for the third time, for West Ham to win the FA Cup it was something I could expect to experience every few years.

But of course life isn’t like that, and here I am in 2018 waiting for it to happen again. Of course we came mightily close in 2006 when we should have beaten Liverpool, and perhaps if the game had been played at Wembley rather than Cardiff then we might have done so. In my lifetime we are unbeaten at Wembley in what I would call important games like FA Cup finals, League Cup finals, Play-Off finals, league games, and league cup ties. I will conveniently ignore the Charity Shield games against Derby (1975) and Liverpool (1980) which act as a curtain raiser to each new season. That unbeaten record was continued on Thursday evening with the magnificent rearguard action in the 1-1 draw against a Tottenham team who everybody expected to beat us comfortably.

Before I finish I’ll go back to 1980. Just two weeks before the FA Cup Final, Geoff and I took our seats at Upton Park in B Block in the old West Stand with less than 20,000 others to watch a league game, which was against Shrewsbury. It was the first time I’d ever seen us play against these opponents as we had never before been in the same division. In the first meeting that season just before Christmas they had given us a 3-0 drubbing at the wonderfully named Gay Meadow Stadium, and they did the same at Upton Park, although this time we did at least have a Trevor Brooking goal as consolation to the three we conceded.

We did the double over them in our record breaking promotion season the next year and we have never played them since. Of course the FA Cup doesn’t have the romance or glamour that it had in my youth, but I would still like us to win it again one day. This season we are battling with a dozen other teams to avoid relegation, and our injuries are mounting up too, so our team today is likely to include a number of our promising youngsters who are rarely given a chance in league games. It wouldn’t be as big a shock as it was in yesteryear if we were to be eliminated from the competition by a third tier side, but as West Ham fans we have experienced it enough times in the cup competitions, and I hope it doesn’t happen today.

Perhaps we can beat Shrewsbury comfortably, then go on a winning run in the league to remove all fears of relegation, and then field a strong side in the latter rounds of the FA Cup before going on to win the trophy next May. We are entitled to dream aren’t we?

Can you imagine a less enthralling fixture to begin a new year of football at the London Stadium than a visit from West Bromwich Albion? It could be worse of course. It could have been a visit from a Baggies team managed by Tony Pulis. But unfortunately for him, although fortunately for lovers of the “beautiful game”, he became one of a number of Premier League managerial casualties in the first half of this season.

Tonight’s game is the first of a ridiculous fixture pile-up which will see us playing two Premier League games and a third round FA Cup tie in less than six days. Although those of us old enough to remember the “good old days” will remember that at this time of the year, footballers were asked to play anything up to four games in a week over the Christmas period, and even play a match on Christmas Day itself back in the 1950’s.

We go into this game as two teams occupying 18^th and 19^th positions in the Premier League with just over half the season gone. Remaining in these positions at the end of May would mean that next season we would be facing each other again in the Championship. But when you look at the league table the bottom half is very close with Huddersfield in 11^th on 24 points right down to ourselves on 18 points. The good news is that we have at least a game in hand over every other team in the league (with the exception of Tottenham), and two games in hand over the majority of the sides in the bottom half. The bad news is that the additional game in hand is at Wembley against our North London neighbours, and despite our surprising win there in the Carabao Cup, that will be a very difficult game to get something from.

For this reason a victory tonight is imperative if we want to lift ourselves out of the relegation zone and begin to climb the table. Our visitors have been in a terrible run of form since winning both of their opening games 1-0 (when they sat in third place in the table) and haven’t won a league game since with nine draws and nine defeats. But as I have written before on many occasions when we have faced a team in such despairing form, we all know what happens when they come up against West Ham! For once we need this to not be one of those times.

After our two games this week we face a run of fixtures which will almost certainly define our season. On paper at least, the next five games, away at Huddersfield, at home to Bournemouth and Palace, away at Brighton, and then at home to Watford, are all winnable fixtures. Of course there are no easy games when you are in our predicament, but if we want to avoid a real struggle in the latter stages of the season then these are games where we must hope to pick up maximum points, and at least avoid defeat.

These are then followed by visits to Liverpool and Swansea, before three home games in a row against Burnley, Manchester United and Southampton taking us to the end of March. At this stage we will have equalised our home and away games (16 of each), before facing a trickier run-in where our six games include visits to Chelsea, Arsenal and Leicester, and home games against Stoke, Manchester City and Everton. We must hope that we are not still in danger of the drop when we enter April.

There was a period in the 1960’s when there were goals galore in home matches against West Brom, and I can remember looking forward to the games then because we always seemed to beat them. The first time I remember playing them was in our cup winning season (1963-64). It was in November 1963, shortly before Kennedy was assassinated. We beat them 4-2. Geoff Hurst scored a couple. It was the first time I can remember seeing Geoff Hurst take a penalty (Johnny Byrne was our regular penalty taker at the time) and he smashed it as hard as he could to the keeper’s right. He always took penalties that way and even though the keepers knew that, they couldn’t often get near them (although Gordon Banks famously did in the League Cup semi-final a few years later!).

“Good Friday” (Easter 1965) was a famous game in our history. This was the day when Brian Dear scored five goals in a twenty minute spell either side of half time in our 6-1 trouncing of the Baggies. The following January we beat them 4-0 with Geoff Hurst again scoring twice, and then there was another win in December 1966 when we “only” beat them 3-0. In 1968 we put another four past them with a Martin Peters hat trick. This game was sandwiched between putting five past Burnley the previous week and seven past Bolton four days afterwards. In six consecutive seasons of home games against West Brom we won five and lost one, scoring 23 goals and conceding 6. Martin Peters scored six times, as did Brian Dear, with five from Geoff Hurst. No wonder I always looked forward to games against them when I was young.

In the 1969-70 season we suffered a 3-1 reverse to them. A letter in the Tottenham programme a few games later caught my eye. A Miss Shirley Tiller wrote: “I wish to express my disgust at the behaviour of a section of the crowd at the match against WBA on 23^rd August. Have these so-called “supporters”, who booed and slow handclapped, ever stopped to realise that, whilst to them, watching football is a pleasant relaxation, to the players it is their means of livelihood? Some of them do not get paid any more than people in other walks of life; we all make mistakes in our day-to-day work (no one is infallible) and yet for some reason footballers are not expected to make any! In nine games out of ten we get first class entertainment for the 5 shillings we spend (25p) Surely as supporters we should encourage them not chastise them so bitterly.”

Her letter got me thinking how times have changed. Firstly, today’s players are in a different earnings league compared to most people in other walks of life as was suggested. Secondly it didn’t cost us a lot to get in then even allowing for inflation (the programme cost one shilling that season as well), and finally, players still get booed and verbally abused but whatever happened to the slow handclap? That has totally disappeared from the game! There were other “interesting” letters in the programme, one concerning the litter dropped in the East Stand, and another complaining about the pigeons at the ground! Apparently season ticket holders were coming “under fire!” You wouldn’t see letters along those lines these days.

Our game against West Brom in February 1973 was a shocking game to watch, one of the worst I can ever remember. This was summed up neatly by David Miller of the Sunday Telegraph who wrote “This wretched display by West Bromwich – hacking, arguing and niggling throughout – will leave few of those present shedding tears at their imminent disappearance into the Second Division.” Effectively the referee added on an additional eight minutes to the second half purely to allow for time wasting, although it felt like he just wanted West Ham to get the winner that we deserved. And we did too with Pop Robson’s late goal clinching a 2-1 victory. West Brom were relegated finishing bottom that season. Personally I’d like to see both West Brom and Stoke get relegated this season purely because of their approach to football in the past few years. Of course there is a common denominator there in terms of a manager who was in charge of both of them.

I guess that tonight’s game is likely to be a tight one with both teams not wanting to lose. We are slightly odds-on to win the match, but I’d like a repeat of Good Friday 1965. You can get odds of 500-1 on a 6-1 West Ham victory. Perhaps the in-form Arnie could replicate Brian Dear’s tally of five goals? You can get 90-1 on him scoring a hat-trick. Wouldn’t that be a great way to start 2018?

West Ham haven’t played all the other teams yet (i.e. Bournemouth) and yet here we are playing the return fixture against the Geordies

Well well well. It’s the 23rd December, Santa is due tomorrow night, and here we are playing a game of football at home in the London Stadium which kicks off at 3.00 pm. This is only the second time we kick off at this traditional time in what will be our ninth home league game of the season. Of course we have already played ten times away from home so the end of this game denotes the half way point of the season. Normally (at least in recent times) this would mean that we have played every other team in the Premier League once. This time it is not the case as we have yet to face Bournemouth, but this is the return fixture against Newcastle.

I don’t believe that at any stage this season the number of home games played has equalled the number of games played away, and it will not be the case until the end of March when, after three consecutive home games in that month, we will have played 32 games split equally between home and away matches. In fact after our away game against Swansea on 3 March the home matches played will once again be three in deficit to the away ones, a situation we found ourselves in at the end of August.

The London Stadium detractors will say that this does not put us at a disadvantage, but the fact remains we have picked up 11 points from the 8 home games played to date, whereas the ten games on our travels have brought us just six points, with last weekend’s win at Stoke our first this season on another ground. Perhaps if the balance had been more equal we might have found ourselves in a healthier position in the league than we hold at the moment? But it cannot be changed now, and if we are still in a relegation fight towards the end of the season, then at least we have the consolation of six out of the final nine fixtures at home.

The 3-0 win at Stoke was another excellent performance to follow up the games at City and at home to London rivals Chelsea and Arsenal. Seven points in a week is a fine haul after our indifferent start to the season, and if we can defeat an out of form Newcastle team this weekend then the table will look even better, and hopefully we can then begin to look upwards as opposed to downwards. After they had played five games this season, losing the first two and then winning three in a row, the Geordies found themselves in an early season Champions League position of fourth. But since then they have won just one of their last thirteen games, and only picked up just six points, with nine defeats. Their poor run has brought them just one point from their last nine games, and leaves them occupying the third relegation slot. But of course we know what sometimes happens when we face a team that hasn’t won a game for so long.

Our upturn in fortunes has coincided with a change of manager and coaching staff, who must take a lot of the credit. Our players are starting to perform with the quality that we know they have, and especially in a defensive sense are looking more organised than we have seen for some time. Players like Arnie, who some are beginning to be compared to Paolo, and Arthur, are almost becoming cult figures in a short space of time. Let’s not get too carried away, but the signs are looking good.

The game at Stoke provided a controversial moment and Lanzini has been charged with diving to deceive the referee to gain a penalty. Perhaps there was an element of truth in this, and he has history, but I agree with our manager who doesn’t believe it was clear cut. Anybody who has seen Jesus of Manchester City with his outrageous dive in the Manchester derby, and also Dele Alli and Zaha on occasions this season, will surely believe that the Lanzini “dive” was not in the same league. But have any of those been charged? Frankly it is scandalous that we are being penalised when they are not. Ironically I thought that Lanzini was not having the best of times even in our recent good run, but his performance at Stoke showed him coming back to his best, and it is unfortunate that he now has to miss out for a couple of matches.

Based upon recent form, the 11/10 odds on us to beat Newcastle looks like a licence to print money. But of course betting on West Ham can be a precarious business and you never know for sure. However I am confident that we can continue our recent excellent league form and push further up the table with a comfortable victory. And now we are out of the Carabao Cup we can concentrate on the league and the FA Cup!

Once again I am able to use my analogy from Forrest Gump that West Ham are like a box of chocolates, you never know what you are going to get. The win against champions Chelsea on Saturday was unexpected and gave us a much-needed three points in our efforts to climb the table. Nevertheless we are still in the bottom three, and need to continue to demonstrate a consistency of effort and performance to retain the excellent backing from the fans. The atmosphere generated in the London Stadium once again disproved the nonsensical argument that the venue can be compared to a library. All football grounds can be like that at times when the home team are not doing well. Yes, it is not an ideal stadium at the present time and we can hope that structural changes at some stage in the future can make it better. For the time being we have to live with it and not keep harping back to Upton Park. We are not going back. For the record I love the stadium and speak to many others who feel likewise, but until we win more games at home then there will always be doubters.

With three points for a win and just one for a draw, then even if we remained unbeaten and managed a draw in each of the Chelsea and Arsenal games this week, we wouldn’t have been in as good a position as winning one and losing one. And having won the first then hopefully we can do it again in the second against the odds.

Recent history of this fixture suggests that it won’t be an easy task to say the least. Of course we won on their ground in the opening game of the 2015-16 season when Reece Oxford famously kept Ozil in his pocket, but that followed ten consecutive defeats at the hands of the Gunners. The last time we beat them at home was when Marlon Harewood scored a late winner in 2006 which sparked an interesting confrontation between Pardew and Wenger. The Arsenal manager seemed to take offence at our manager’s celebrations, a situation which has reared its head this week following accusations of over-celebration by City players when they won the Manchester derby at Old Trafford on Sunday.

We now have 13 points from 16 games, which means that even a win tonight would still not bring us up to the one point per game average that is the absolute minimum needed to keep us in with a chance of avoiding the drop. But I am looking forward to more than that.

I will repeat the run of 10 league games following Arsenal tonight to highlight the opportunity that we have to significantly improve our position by 10 February. It would be good if we could collect an average of somewhere between 1.5 and 2 points a game in these fixtures. If we could achieve this we will be going a long way towards allaying relegation fears.  (A) v Stoke, (H) v Newcastle, (A) v Bournemouth, (H) v West Brom, (A) v Tottenham, (A) v Huddersfield, (H) v Bournemouth, (H) v Palace, (A) v Brighton, and (H) v Watford, presents a realistic opportunity (on paper) to start to climb the table. Failure to do so will bring a nervous run-in to the season.

It is pleasing to see that the way-over-the-top negative reaction to the appointment of David Moyes has died down considerably. There is still a long way to go of course, but the work ethic and organisation he (and his staff) has introduced are clearly evident in recent games. He has a good record and must be given the opportunity to make an impact. Rome wasn’t built in a day and I believe that he realises the task ahead and is prioritising what is necessary to achieve improvement. One small criticism I would level against him in the Chelsea game was his inability to realise that Antonio was out on his feet long before he was substituted.

Once again the bookmakers have virtually written off our chances but if you believe that there is a chance that we will cause another upset you can get around 9/2 on a West Ham win. Personally I would take a draw from this game, but hope of course for a second victory in five days. Despite being a top six side, Arsenal are not quite the team that they once were, and are eminently beatable. One statistic that surprised me was that the Gunners are fourth in the table of goals conceded in 2017, showing that their once renowned defence can be breached. We certainly don’t want a repeat of the 5-1 defeat that we suffered here last season.

The much under-rated Pedro Obiang was in my opinion one of the reasons that we kept a world class player like Hazard quiet at the weekend, and I don’t believe that he gets the credit he deserves for this unfashionable role. I would expect him to be deployed in similar fashion against Ozil, or perhaps Sanchez tonight. Arnautavic and Masuaku were rightly singled out for excellent games, but it really was a whole team performance. Masuaku is really becoming a bit a bit of a revelation in an attacking sense, and providing he doesn’t try his wonderful tricks in vulnerable areas of the pitch then he can become a major creator for us going forward. I would expect Hernandez to play a part now that he appears to have recovered, and Carroll does have a very good record of scoring against Arsenal as witnessed in the 3-3 draw a couple of seasons ago, and even in his Newcastle days.

Adrian deserves his chance to continue between the sticks, but I cannot agree with the vilification of Hart that I read. Hopefully the competition between the two keepers will spur them both on to produce top class performances. Cresswell had one of his best games for ages at the weekend, and the unlikely threesome when he combined with Reid and Ogbonna, who both performed excellently, is likely to be the selection for this game. Noble performed admirably, and Lanzini, whilst not being at the top of his game at the moment, is still our best hope of unlocking opposition defences. But whoever is selected (and I don’t expect many changes) let us hope for another stirring game and three more points.

For those of us old enough to remember the 1960s, there was a popular song at the end of the decade famously recorded by Fairport Convention, Joni Mitchell, and Neil Diamond entitled Chelsea Morning. The song began with the line “I woke up it was a Chelsea morning.” Well today is not exactly a Chelsea morning, but kick off time is 12.30, so our Saturday morning is spent travelling to the London Stadium for an early start time. How I look forward to 23 December when we kick off the game against Newcastle at the traditional time of 3pm on a Saturday, which will be only the second time this season when a home game will commence at this “normal” time.

Today’s game will be the fifth under our new manager and we have yet to see a victory. The opener at Watford was a poor performance, the following home fixture against Leicester showed much improvement from both the players and the fans, then the game at Goodison Park was appalling. None of us expected much at the Etihad Stadium last Sunday, but we led unexpectedly at half-time thanks to Ogbonna’s well placed header, and were within a few minutes of getting a point against the runaway Premier League leaders who have been brushing aside all and sundry this season. But the solitary point from the last four games leaves us firmly entrenched in the relegation zone with two difficult games against top six sides to follow, and unless we can start winning some games we could easily find ourselves beginning to become detached from safety.

But after Chelsea (today) and Arsenal (in midweek) we embark on a run of league fixtures which, on paper at least, most are games that will be easier for us to start a winning run and begin to climb the table. If we don’t then our season could be well defined by February as one that sees us in a desperate scramble to try to retain our place in the top flight.

The 10 league games following Arsenal are:

16 Dec – (A) v Stoke
23 Dec – (H) v Newcastle
26 Dec – (A) v Bournemouth
2 Jan – (H) v West Brom
4 Jan (A) v Tottenham
13 Jan (A) v Huddersfield
20 Jan (H) v Bournemouth
30 Jan (H) v Palace
3 Feb – (A) v Brighton
10 Feb (H) v Watford

Currently we have just ten points from fifteen games. By the end of the Watford game on 10 February we will have played 27 games, which is almost the three-quarters point in the season. That will then leave us just 11 games to retain our Premier League status, of which six (of the last nine) will be at home to Burnley, Manchester United, Southampton, Stoke, Manchester City and Everton.

So in the next 12 games (including Chelsea and Arsenal this week) we will need to collect at least 17 points to achieve the point a game average at that time which is likely to be the minimum that we will need to be outside the relegation places. And that may not even be enough! I see the five home league games between 23 December and 10 February as ones that can be described as “must win”, and at the same time we must start to pick up some points on our travels. Points obtained against Chelsea and Arsenal this week would be a bonus, and two wins would be simply fantastic, but being realistic that is a lot to hope for, but it won’t stop me hoping!

The players who lined up at the Etihad acquitted themselves well and all will be looking to retain their places against Chelsea. Surely Adrian will start in goal, but whether all of the others will keep their places is hard to predict, and will be subject to any injuries picked up, as well as any players that may be fit to return to the squad. But our new manager is keeping his cards close to his chest, so let us hope that he plays his cards right. Apparently Chelsea will be without Luiz and Drinkwater. That is a shame as I wouldn’t have minded them both playing when compared to some other players at their disposal.

Once again the bookmakers have virtually written off our chances but if you believe that there is a chance that we will cause an upset you can get around 6/1 on a home victory, or 10/1 on West Ham to win and both teams to score. If you fancy a fun bet that is a little different then Paddy Power are offering 33/1 on the following four things all to happen: West Ham to score the first goal and win the first corner, and Chelsea to receive the first card and win the first throw-in.

It will be cold watching for us tomorrow, with the wind chill factor making it seem like minus temperatures. It would be great to spring a surprise, but realistically anything that we can get out of the game will be a bonus.

I have been supporting West Ham for almost sixty years. I am an optimist by nature. I must have watched us play more than a thousand games of football. On virtually every occasion, I’ve always thought that we had a chance of winning the game. OK I’ll admit sometimes it is a slight chance or a long shot, but a chance nonetheless. But for this game? We are more likely to see a blue moon.

On Sunday afternoon we face Manchester City at the Etihad Stadium. Now City have really been a class apart so far this season in the Premier League. These are some of the thoughts attributed to our manager this week ahead of our visit. He has said that “I think that there have been moments when we’ve looked OK.” Even if there have been, my understanding of the word moment is that it refers to a very brief period of time, perhaps a second or two. The word OK is perhaps a very overused word that means adequate or acceptable. I just have a feeling that looking adequate for a few seconds won’t be anywhere near enough to trouble the league leaders.

He has also said “the players are trying to improve and get better”. Well sitting in the bottom three then this is something I would be hoping for. Shouldn’t this be true of all professional footballers at all times? This was followed by “a lot of our goals are down to individual mistakes.” Tell me something that anyone who follows the team didn’t know. He then said “we’ve got a good team.” Many comments I’ve read on social media and in the newspapers this week would suggest that there are a number of people out there who wouldn’t necessarily agree with that one.

He finished with “I’ve never gone into any game thinking that we’ve not got a chance of winning.” Now going back to my opening paragraph this is something I’ve almost always believed, albeit sometimes with many doubts. But this time I am going to make an exception. I really don’t believe that we have any chance whatsoever. In fact it would take a miracle.

One definition of a miracle:

A miracle is an extraordinary and welcome event that is not explicable by natural or scientific laws and is therefore attributed to a divine agency.

My grandson (who is seven) was asked at school this week as part of an English lesson to come up with a sentence that included the word miracle. His offering was “It would be the most amazing miracle of all time if West Ham beat Manchester City on Sunday.” The teacher was full of praise for his excellent understanding of the meaning of the word.

I’ll be watching the game on Sunday with a fellow West Ham fan in a local pub in Bury St Edmunds. I’ll be taking my abacus along to help me keep track of the score, and I’ll be praying for a miracle. On current form this is likely to be one of the most one-sided games in the history of the Premier League. No team has yet scored ten goals in a single game (the record is 9). If you believe in miracles and fancy a flutter here are some of the bets (using Paddy Power as an example) you may like to consider:

West Ham to win the game 33/1
West Ham to win 2-0 200/1
West Ham to win 3-0, 4-0, or 4-1 500/1
No goals to be scored in the game 45/1
Man. City to win 10-0 500/1

There is a saying that is something along the lines of “you never can tell what will happen in a game of football”. This time I think I’ve got a pretty good idea. But I’ll still be hoping for a miracle,

It was a privilege to be at the London Stadium last Friday evening. Not for the quality of the football, although it was a small improvement on what we have previously seen this season. No, the reason was the energy and commitment of the players, which in turn led to the fans giving a demonstration of what backing a team is all about. The volume of support was right up there with what we heard in the games against Chelsea (EFL Cup) and Tottenham last season. The difference this time was that we weren’t actually winning the game. In some ways it was reminiscent of the infamous FA Cup semi-final against Nottingham Forest over a quarter of a century ago when Keith Hackett totally ruined a game of football, but the fans continued to support the team until the end. The only disappointment was that we couldn’t get a winning goal, but nevertheless the fans received plaudits from players, pundits and the media generally for the voluminous and continuous support.

Now, can we please put an end to the stadium excuses and comments regarding lack of atmosphere? If the players demonstrate their commitment, then the fans will show theirs. Those of us who have been supporters for many years will accept losing games. What we won’t accept is heads going down when a goal is conceded, or lack of effort. As David Moyes has said, full commitment for 90 minutes should be the absolute minimum that players should give to a game. Too often in recent times that hasn’t been the case. It is still early days, and there is a long way to go, but I have to say that I have been very impressed with the start that our new manager and coaching staff have made. There was some ridiculous criticism of an appointment of a manger who, arguably, has been more successful (certainly in terms of league positions attained) than any other manager in our history. The players have been given a justifiable kick up the backside, so let us hope that the increased enthusiasm leads to some positive results, especially in view of the tough fixture list coming up.

The game against the Toffees is one where both teams are considered to be in crisis, perhaps Everton even more surprisingly than ourselves. They were widely tipped to finish seventh in the Premier League and perhaps be challenging the dominance of the elite six. Quite clearly that hasn’t happened, Koeman was sacked around a month ago, and surprisingly they have left a caretaker (Unsworth) in charge. If anything their season has nosedived still further in the last month, and Moyes has said we are going into the game full of confidence. I have some reservations, partly because of our past record against teams who are in poor form, where somehow they seem to relish our visit which enables them to turn their form around. Beware a wounded toffeeman, he can be a dangerous beast!

Wayne Rooney in particular has had a miserable return to his home town club, and a miserable few months off the pitch too. He has been left on the bench for the past couple of games, but somehow I can see him being picked for our visit and we all know what an impressive record he has when playing against us. But at least we haven’t got Lukaku to deal with this time!

Everton actually began the season well with a 1-0 win against Stoke in the opener, followed by an even more impressive draw at Manchester City in their next match. They still remain the only team (with 13 games of the season gone) to have denied City a three point haul in a game. Of course City are our next opponents at the weekend, and if recent history is anything to go by then many will be dusting down their abacuses in readiness for our visit to the Etihad, but perhaps it is our time to turn the tables on a team in superb form?
After the four points from their opening two games, Everton have only won twice more, 2-1 against Bournemouth, and an extremely fortuitous 3-2 victory over Watford (from 2-0 down). If you believe in sequences, then Everton seem to win a game, then fail to win in the next four. They won their first, sixth, and eleventh game of the season, so they are not due a victory until the sixteenth (this is game 14). But we are a good bet to help other teams break a sequence aren’t we?

Once more our game is being televised, so I’ll settle down with my Everton mints and hope that we can get at them as soon as the Z-Cars theme is over. An early goal from us would hopefully get the home crowd on the backs of their players. The Merseyside natives are getting restless with the performances of their team in recent games, so let us hope they don’t choose to up their game for this one, as they have frequently done in the past few seasons against us. At the time of writing this article they still haven’t appointed a permanent manager, but our old friend Big Sam is widely tipped to be taking over the reins there. Their search is now even more urgent after their poor performance in a 4-1 defeat at Southampton at the weekend.

As with all West Ham games this is a difficult one to call, and despite their indifferent form, the bookmakers still have Everton as firm favourites to win the match. Historically they have a far superior record in games against us with 68 wins in 136 matches, and we have only beaten them once in the league (either home or away) in the last ten years (3-2 at Goodison in 2016, after coming back from two down). Perhaps it is now our turn to break our sequence of poor results against them?

Leicester City, the most unlikely 5000-1 winners of the Premier League just over a season ago are the next visitors to the London Stadium in the first game of the weekend on Friday night. This is their fourth consecutive season in the top flight and their 50^th in their history, compared to our 60. They returned after a period of ten years out in 2014-15, and struggled throughout that season. With 29 games played they had amassed just 19 points and were seven points adrift of safety. They looked odds-on to return to the Championship, but with Nigel Pearson at the helm they won seven of their last nine games to finish on a respectable 41 points in 14^th position, just two places below us. Early in that season we had beaten them 2-0 at Upton Park with goals from Carroll and Downing, but we were the losers in the return, which was one of their seven wins in the run-in, going down 2-1 with Kouyate scoring our goal.

The following season was the stuff of fairy tales and has been written about at length. Suffice to say we will probably have to wait another 5000 years for a repeat. Pearson had been sacked and Ranieri took over to mastermind one of the most astonishing stories in the history of football. They beat us 2-1 at Upton Park in our first home game of the final season there (a Frenchman scored our goal), but we were unlucky in the return at their place near the end of the season, when leading 2-1 in the 95^th minute we failed to retain possession of the ball (just for a change!!) and then Carroll conceded what to most observers was a dubious penalty decision, and we ended with a draw. Carroll and Cresswell were our scorers that day.

Last season (2016-17) they came back down to earth and eventually finished in 12^th place (we finished 11^th). Ranieri was sacked in February after five consecutive defeats, and replaced by Shakespeare, who began his tenure with five straight wins, although four of them were home games, and Hull, Stoke, Sunderland and ourselves were not the most demanding of opponents. They did the double over us winning 1-0 at their place, and 3-2 at the London Stadium, where goals from Lanzini and Ayew were not enough to complete an unlikely comeback in a 3-2 defeat. They did perform exceptionally well in the Champions League, before just going out at the quarter-final stage to Atletico Madrid.

This season, after a poor start winning just one of their first eight games, the Bard himself was sacked and they now have Claude Puel in charge. They have since picked up a creditable 7 points from their last four games and now sit 12^th in the table on 13 points, winning 3, drawing 4 and losing 5 of their 12 games. This puts them out of our reach even if we can manage a victory in this game, but we desperately need to win the match to ensure that we don’t fall further behind in the relegation scrap at the foot of the table. Their away record comprises a win at Swansea, draws at Huddersfield, Bournemouth and Stoke, and defeats at Arsenal and Manchester United.

So many of our players had poor games at Watford that it hard to second guess the team that Moyes will select to try to achieve what would be an important win. One player who did do himself justice was Masuaku who had a fine 20 minute cameo, and I would like to see him selected in a more advanced role than full back. He showed an ability to take on and beat opponents as well as putting in decent crosses. I’d like to see Sakho and possibly Martinez start up front to give us greater mobility in that position, which would mean no place for Carroll who can be a potential liability. Lanzini needs to have a central role to be effective, not stuck out on the left. I hope that Rice enters the manager’s plans, perhaps filling a defensive midfield role protecting the defence, possibly alongside Obiang who has not been at his best recently, but in my view would be preferable to Noble and Kouyate.

When I looked at the bookmakers’ odds for the game, both Leicester and ourselves are currently priced at around 17/10 to win the game, with 23/10 on the draw. Surely we can’t play as badly again as we did at Watford where we were totally outclassed, yet could have possibly scored four goals from clear-cut chances. I would like to think that Hernandez would have made much more of the goalscoring opportunities that fell to Kouyate (twice), Arnautavic and Lanzini, although Gomes did pull off one tremendous double save.

The statistics from the Watford game apparently show that collectively, West Ham players covered more ground than in any other league game this season. But that alone is quite clearly not the answer, and Moyes and his coaching team will have had to work hard this week to try to ensure an improved performance for this game. The atmosphere has been described as “toxic” around the club, and I hate to imagine the reaction if we concede the first goal in the game. Scoring first would give everyone a lift, and that is what we must hope for.