Richard Bennett

Bilic out or Bilic in? Where do the fans stand?

With three games gone, and still almost a fortnight until our first home game of the season, we look at the speculation regarding the manager

Much has been said and written about our game last weekend at Newcastle, and our season to date. We are only three games into the Premier League campaign, but we sit at the foot of the table, just as we did after both the first and second round of games, too. We’ve been there before at this stage and gone on to have an OK season. Also, from this position we have not progressed and ended up being relegated.

I’ve been a regular at Upton Park (and latterly the London Stadium) for sixty years. I’ve seen us win the first three games of the season, or lose the first three, and every combination in between. Perhaps the worst start I remember was in 1962-63 when we lost our first three games 1-3, 1-4, and 1-6, and two of them were at home! (to cap it all, the 6-1 defeat was to Tottenham!). In fact we only had one point after five games, and were rock bottom of the league. But we rallied to finish comfortably in mid-table, and by the first week of October we’d had wins of 6-1, 4-0, 6-0 and 5-0.

But it is not just the fact that we have lost our first three games, albeit all away from home, and at grounds where we haven’t had much success in the past. It is the manner of those defeats that worries most fans, and apart from our comeback against the odds at St. Mary’s, our football has not been of sufficient quality to warrant a great deal of optimism. It would be hard to envisage a turnaround of 1962 proportions.

The majority view, as far as I can tell, is that we have generally had a successful transfer window. At least most thought so before we had played any games. Personally, I believe that the jury is out, although I do reckon that we have a squad of players capable of finishing in a mid-table position. The evidence of the opening games doesn’t necessarily suggest that, though, and fans and pundits alike have been having their say regarding what has gone wrong.

If you read the newspapers, watch football on TV and listen to the comments of ex-players who now ply their trade as experts, and sift through the multitude of views on social media, then there are so many differing views as to why we sit at the bottom.

The biggest debate seems to surround the manager (and coaching staff, perhaps), who many feel are not getting the best out of the players that we have. On the one hand we have the ‘Bilic out’ brigade who I generally feel aren’t just picking on him as a result of the first three games and lack of results and points. Many like him as a person, and for his enthusiasm, but feel that the writing was on the wall last season and has just continued into this one. They cite what they consider to be some strange team selections, players not playing in their best positions, an apparent favouritism for “undroppable players” (Noble being the main one here), poor preparation for games, a lack of organisation and tactical awareness, and players not seeming to understand (or able to carry out?) a playing style that has any consistency or is the right one for the opposition that we are facing. Many are also questioning the fitness of the squad, which is very worrying at this stage of the campaign, as were the post-match comments from the captain and manager talking about “tiredness” which I found to be astonishing.

The “pro Bilic” supporters on the other hand, which appear to me to be declining in numbers, although many still exist, cite the fact that we finished a very creditable seventh (which could have been even higher) in his first season in charge, we were only a point off eighth last season, after a difficult time of transition to a new stadium, both of which were final league positions that they consider to be appropriate for a team of our standing, and he should be given more time. I read phrases like “we need to stick together”, and “in Slav we trust”, whilst at the same time the pro-Bilic fans believe the blame lies elsewhere, in particular the board. But for those supporters who want to back the manager I have read very little that contradicts the reasons put forward by those of an opposing view.

Quite how anyone knows what the manager was told by the chairman at their meeting at Rush Green last Sunday I do not know. Perhaps the discussion was leaked, either deliberately or inadvertently, but the general consensus seems to be that he has four games to “turn it around.” Other reports suggest that he only has two. According to some, Sullivan has a “six defeats in a row and you are out” policy. Whether this is fact or conjecture only time will tell.

Discounting the Bolton League Cup tie, which is at home, three of the next four league games will also be played at the London Stadium, and they will not be as easy as many believe. Huddersfield have seven points from their opening three games without conceding a goal, Tottenham are always a danger despite their indifferent start to the season, and Swansea look more formidable than they were for much of last season. Those are the three home games, whilst a visit to the Hawthorns against a so-far unbeaten West Brom team will not be a walk in the park either. I have no idea what will be considered an acceptable improvement, but I would imagine that being unbeaten in the month of September will be the minimum requirement, but who knows for sure?

What we do know is that if the board decides that they have had enough and appoint a new manager, he will have to work with the squad that we have. And what odds can you currently get on who our next manager will be? Benitez is favourite at 5/2, followed by Mancini, Inzaghi, Jokanovic, Bielsa and Howe, in a list that extends to 33 names down to Curbishley at 66/1. And he isn’t the only ex-manager of our club on the list. Pardew, Redknapp, Zola and Roeder all appear too, showing what a nonsense this betting market can be.

As a fan, I hope he does turn it around and we have five wins in the next month, and sit with twelve points from seven games played in the league, as well as progressing to the next round of the league cup. I fear however that he may not be the right person to take the club forward, and wonder if he recognises and can change what many believe to be his shortcomings as a manager? The next month will be an interesting one, as it always is (one way or another) when you support our team.

A few thoughts after just two games of the Premier League season

Early season expectations, advance of the stats and the time wasting rip-off.

1 Two games do not a season make

Lots of football followers are getting a bit carried away with how their team will fare this season, even though we are just two games into the Premier League campaign.

Huddersfield are only the second team to keep clean sheets in their opening two Premier League games following promotion from the Championship. The first team to do so were Charlton in 1998-99. And what happened to Charlton that season? Yes, they were relegated.

Hull City had six points after their first two Premier League games last season after promotion. They had beaten champions Leicester in their first game, and then won away at Swansea in their second. Of course, they were relegated at the end of last season.

2 Expected Goals (xG)

We continue to be bombarded with ever-increasing volumes of statistics in football these days, which may be of some interest, but what do they actually prove? Arsenal had 77% possession of the ball at Stoke last weekend and lost the game 1-0. Does that mean it is better not to have the ball too much?

And the latest statistic to come to prominence this season, although it has been around for a while is “expected goals”. I have been reading about this in some detail, and despite quite a liking for statistical analysis (out of interest only), I wonder if this one has been thought through properly. The concept is that they now measure the probability that any given shot will result in a goal. The purpose is to quantify the quality of each chance created, by analysing historical shots (up to one million of them) to assess how the probability of a goal being scored is affected by various factors, such as the distance and angle from the goal, whether the shot was hit by the stronger or weaker foot, or head, the type of assist, and passage of play.

Expected goals (given the shorthand xG) for each individual shot can then be added together to arrive at the expected goals for individual players and for teams. So, for example, in the Arsenal game at Stoke last weekend, the Gunners won the “xG” by 1.48 to 0.67. What does this prove? That they were the better team? Just like possession statistics does it really matter? Stoke won the game 1-0.

And what about potential flaws in the data? What other factors are not taken into account? The quality of the defenders, does the chance occur at the beginning or end of the game, what is the score at the time, are you under greater or less pressure because of league position, the beginning or end of the season, tiredness. These are just some of the factors that have occurred to me, and I’m sure there are many others. There are so many “human dimensional” factors that will influence what will happen in a game of football, and you have to include “luck” too.

Just for interest, in expected goals terms (xG) we lost our opening fixture at Old Trafford 1.93-0.48. Our game at St. Mary’s was a close run thing but we lost that, too, by 2.08-1.96. I’m sure that there are data analysts out there who would prefer the results of matches, and the subsequent league tables to be based on expected goals rather than actual goals! On a lesser scale, instead of extra-time and penalty shoot-outs, perhaps they would like to use xG to determine the result of drawn (actual goals!) cup games? It would be almost impossible to have a drawn xG game, so we would always have a winner.

What nonsense! Let’s not take this all too far! An interesting insight into performance? Perhaps, yes. Am I missing the point? Perhaps, yes. But let’s not get too carried away. Although if it was based on xG we wouldn’t actually be bottom of the league after two games!

3 Time-Wasting

In June I wrote a series of articles based upon the International Football Association Board (IFAB) rule change proposals. Part 3 of my series looked at their ideas for increasing playing time, which revealed how they were considering dispensing with 45 minute halves in a game of football, and replacing it with two periods of thirty minutes, with the clock being stopped every time the ball went out of play. The purpose was to make the concept of time-wasting a thing of the past, as the clock would not be running unless the ball was in play.

In my article I made reference to Tony Pulis bringing his Stoke City side to play at Upton Park in years gone by and how much time-wasting went on. And in an article I wrote for the much missed fanzine, Over Land and Sea, in November 2015, and also in my book, Goodbye Upton Park, Hello Stratford, my review of West Ham v West Brom (managed by Tony Pulis!) on 29 November 2015 referred to my own timekeeping of the game when I watched it back in replay on Sky Plus. I timed the second half as around 25 minutes of actual playing time.

So I had to smile when I read a piece on the BBC Sport website which referred to last weekend’s Burnley v West Brom match (you know the manager of the away side here!) which timed that the ball was in play for 47 minutes and 40 seconds in total! No game in the premier League has seen less action than this one. The fans are most definitely being short-changed in this respect. Apparently all the games in the Premier League this season have been timed and the ball was in play for more than an hour in just two of them. It’s about time the lawmakers took action and introduced this rule change immediately. It would be so simple. It would totally eliminate the whole concept of time-wasting. What is stopping it from happening?

A preview of West Ham at Newcastle

Can West Ham record their first league victory of the season?

If we want to avoid the ignominy of still propping up the Premier League table by the end of the next round of matches we will have to significantly improve upon our performances at St James Park in recent times. Without delving back too far, just looking at our results there in the 21^st century, we have played 13 games and won only once. That sole victory was courtesy of a Kevin Nolan goal in November 2012 in our first season back in the top flight under Sam Allardyce. Although that win was less than five years ago, it demonstrates the turnover of players at our club in that of the starting eleven, Reid, Carroll and Noble are the only three who are still at the club, and Collins is the only one of the seven substitutes still here.

Being quite disheartened by our record in the present century, I looked back to the twentieth century and found little comfort when assessing our historical visits to the North-East. We first played a top flight away game at Newcastle in 1923, the year we played in the first Wembley FA Cup Final. But we didn’t manage a win up there until fifty years later in 1973 when Ted MacDougall netted twice in a 2-1 victory. One more win in the 1970s in 1977 was by the margin of 3-2 with our goals scored by Jennings, Taylor and Pop Robson. In our record breaking 1985-86 campaign we won 2-1 with goals from McAvennie and Cottee (who else?), and our next win was 2-1 in 1989 when Keen and Ward hit the target. A 1-0 victory in the 1997-98 season came from a Stan Lazaridis goal, and we followed this up in the next season with our most emphatic win there, 3-0, with two goals from Ian Wright and another from Trevor Sinclair. In total we have won just seven league games at St James Park in around 50 attempts!

Our last visit there was in January 2016, the season before last, when we conceded two goals in the first quarter of an hour, before Jelavic pulled a goal back early in the second half. We ended up losing 2-1 and Newcastle were relegated that season.

In terms of Premier League status, the Geordies are a club on a similar level to ourselves, being one of the top ten clubs in terms of seasons spent in the top league. Only six clubs have been ever present in the top flight in the 25 years of its existence up to the end of last season, namely Manchester United, Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool, Tottenham and Everton. Aston Villa come next on 24, followed by Newcastle on 22, West Ham on 21, and Manchester City 20.

In that time they have been more successful than us, in that their highest placed finish is 2^nd (twice) (ours is 5^th), and they have finished in the top four on five occasions, although the last of those was in 2003. Since then they have been relegated twice, but bounced back at the first attempt both times.

Newcastle have made an equally ignominious start to ourselves, and in their first two games of the season they lost 2-0 at home to Tottenham, and then 1-0 at newly-promoted Huddersfield. So they have no points and have not scored a league goal this season. In addition they were dumped out of the EFL cup this week, losing 3-2 at home to Championship side Nottingham Forest.

But beware! In their entire history, Newcastle have only once failed to score in their first three top flight games, and also Rafael Benitez has never lost three consecutive Premier League games as a manager in England. But on the plus side, Chicarito has scored three goals in his last four league games against Newcastle when he has started, and the one that we really hope will continue is that Joe Hart has never been on the losing side in 16 league games against them.

The Sports Analytics Machine (SAM), the super-computer used to predict the outcome of football matches reckons that the game will end in a 1-1 draw. I am more hopeful, and the return of Lanzini, and the confidence of the team gained by our first win in midweek, will I believe lead to our first league win of the season, and only our eighth when visiting Newcastle. I’ll predict a 2-1 victory.

A Review of West Ham at Southampton

West Ham 2017-18 – What do you think of it so far?

For those of you old enough (like me) to remember the 1970s, one of the famous Morecambe & Wise catchphrases was when Eric Morecambe asked the question in a sketch “what do you think of it so far?” Many of our fans on social media, if asked about the beginning of our season, would appear to have the same answer as that posed in the sketch, which is “rubbish”.

Certainly we are not where we would like to be after two games. Propping up the table with no points, the most goals conceded, the biggest negative goal difference, and a visit to (tongue in cheek, hopefully) fellow relegation strugglers Newcastle up next, does not make for happy reading.

Saturday’s game at Southampton was filled with action, controversy, goals, negatives, some positives, many mistakes, and violent challenges, and we even featured as the first game on Match of the Day, which is something of a rarity. Of course the edited highlights didn’t do real justice to the game, as highlights so frequently do not. Despite playing for a large part of the game with ten men, and at one stage just before half time being two goals down, we fought back well with two well-taken goals from Hernandez, and his performance gives me hope for our goal scoring in the season ahead.

The Reid injury in the warm up is just so typical West Ham, as was conceding a penalty in the 93^rd minute to lose the game. Even Mark Noble had a hand in the winning spot-kick by revealing to Charlie Austin that Joe Hart knew where he was going to place the kick, and this made him change his mind. And speaking of typical West Ham, Southampton were thankful for us being the hospitable visitors which allowed them to break their long goal-less sequence at home, and allowed Gabbiadini to score for the first time in eleven games.

Referee Mason was praised in many quarters, not least on Match of the Day for getting almost all his decisions right. Mmmmm. Yes, Arnautavic had to go, but he completely missed Lemina’s leading arm (which should have been a red card beforehand) which led to our Austrian signing’s retaliatory challenge. He also missed a waist high challenge from Tadic early in the game which could have been a red card, he didn’t punish Noble sufficiently for a horror tackle, and he missed a blatant handball which should have given us an obvious penalty.

I may be wrong, but I also thought that fouls which deny a goal-scoring opportunity (where no attempt is made to play the ball) should also result in a sending off. If this is the case, then perhaps Fonte and Zabaleta should have gone too when conceding the two penalties. Since the beginning of the Bilic reign we have now conceded more goals from the penalty spot (13) than any other Premier League team. Arnautavic will miss some games now; the same should be true for Mason in my view.

I could ask so many questions about the game:

Is it me, or was it a bizarre selection with Noble in the team and Obiang on the bench?

Did Fonte really look like a Euro 2016 central defender? What was the point in attempting a stranglehold when the ball was running away from the attacker anyway? Should a defender of this supposed stature be so easily outpaced, and too busy ball-watching, for the first goal.

Has anybody told Zabaleta that pushes in the penalty area, which are not penalties when playing for Manchester City, are more likely to be awarded against West Ham? Did the attacker fall down easily and con the referee?

Have you ever seen Steve McFadden (Phil Mitchell) and Lee Mason together in the same place?

What does Andre Ayew contribute to our cause? Did we really pay £20 million plus for him?

There are so many more that I could ask, but I’ve given up asking rhetorical questions. What’s the point? (Alexei Sayle, Edinburgh 2017)

But there were positives, too. Arnautavic looked lively (in the first few minutes!), Hernandez goals, another assured performance from young Rice, the return of Antonio who looked good, Sakho’s return, and the fight back which resulted in the creation of more shots, and more shots on target than the home side, despite the lack of possession. And we only sit six points off the top, or four away from a Champions League position! Hopefully Lanzini will be back for the next game, too.

But there is a long way to go in the season. We can still push for a top half finish, especially when we get to play some games at home! Currently, Huddersfield, West Brom and Watford are sitting in the top six in the table. None of them will be anywhere close by the end. But they have all stolen a march on us in the opening games. We’ll have to come from behind, just as we did on Saturday.

A preview of West Ham at Southampton

After the Manchester United debacle, a trip down the M3 to visit Southampton, one of West Ham’s challengers to finish as champions of the second tier of the Premier League

I believe that the top seven places in the Premier League are already reserved for the two Manchester clubs, the two Merseyside teams, and the London trio of Tottenham, Chelsea, and Arsenal. I’d love to be proved wrong but I’d get short odds from a bookmaker on those teams to finish at the top, even though the exact order that they will finish in is not cut and dried.

Southampton are the current “champions of the second tier of teams in the Premier League” after their eighth place finish last season, although the competition for this “honour” is a close run thing. They only finished a point ahead of ourselves (11^th), and only six points separated 8^th from 17^th. I anticipate a similar close contest this time around.

In many ways the recent fortunes of Southampton are fairly similar to our own, although they have slightly the upper hand when it comes to league positions. We were both promoted to the top tier in 2011-12; they just pipped us for the second automatic place by two points, and it was the two games that we played each other that proved to be the difference. A 0-1 reverse at St. Mary’s in October 2011 was followed by a 1-1 draw in a controversial game at Upton Park on Valentine’s Day in 2012. Their four points to our one was essentially why they went up automatically, although with the benefit of hindsight, I wouldn’t have wanted to miss that great day at Wembley in May 2012 when we beat Blackpool in the play-off final.

In the first season back in the Premier League (2012-13) we finished a creditable tenth, with five more points that Southampton who were 14^th. The following year our placings were reversed with the Saints 8^th, 16 points ahead of ourselves in 13^th. In 2014-15 the gap was 13 points with their seventh placed finish five places in front of us (12^th). We both had excellent seasons in 2015-16; we were pleased to finish in seventh place in what in many ways (although not finishing position) many consider was our best ever season in the Premier League, but once again they were slightly above us by one position (6^th) and one point. And one point (and three places) was their slender advantage over us last season.

In our two most recent games we shared the spoils, with a comprehensive Southampton victory (3-0) at the London Stadium just a fortnight after we had thrown away a two goal advantage in the home game against Watford last September, the catalysts for early season discontent which saw us sitting in a relegation place at the time. But by the time we met them in the reverse fixture at their place early in February this year, our fortunes had picked up considerably, and the three goals from Carroll, Obiang and Noble in a 3-1 win pushed us up to 9^th place in the table. In a season where we only managed to score three or more goals in a league game on four occasions, we were in a hot streak (by our standards) at this time, scoring three goals for the third time in just three weeks. I try to forget though, that just three days before our victory at St Mary’s, Manchester City hammered us 4-0 at the London Stadium.

Head-to-head in the last six seasons (the Championship promotion year, and the five seasons since), we are very even with four wins, four draws and four defeats, with 15 goals scored to their 14. One interesting feature of this period is that Andy Carroll has scored in three of those games, although he is not yet ready to return to action, but Mark Noble has done even better. He has scored in four of the games (five goals in total), which must make our opponents one of his favourite teams to play against.

Our injury list has only reduced slightly with the return of Michail Antonio, although Sakho appears to have remained OK after his substitute appearance last weekend. Carroll, Kouyate, and Lanzini are all apparently close to a return but not quite close enough. Based upon last week’s performance, and the principle of horses for courses, as well as the need to recognise that Hernandez needs a partner to be at his best, I would expect our manager to name the following line-up for this game:

Hart

Zabaleta, Reid, Ogbonna, Cresswell,

Antonio, Noble, Obiang, Arnautovic,

Hernandez, Sakho

My main concerns, which are not new, are the possibility of being over-run in midfield, giving the ball away cheaply too often, the lack of pace at the back, and our slow build-up play. The manager may opt for Ayew (although I don’t know why), and Rice would be unlucky not to be called up based upon his excellent cameo at Old Trafford. Fernandes remains a good young prospect, but like Masuaku, both had poor games last weekend and may find themselves on the bench. Perhaps Sakho is not yet ready for a start, and either Antonio or Arnautavic might be pushed forward to partner Hernandez, which might give us the opportunity to bolster the midfield. Hopefully, all the players will be aware of the imminent return of Carroll, Lanzini, and Kouyate, and put in performances worthy of the shirt.

I’ll predict a draw, but hope that I am wrong and we sneak a victory. Perhaps Mark Noble will add to his goal tally against Southampton? Let us hope for an improved performance, and that we are not still at the foot of the table after this round of matches.

A reflective view on our trip to Manchester United last Sunday

A look back at West Ham’s defeat at Old Trafford now that the dust has settled.

Having let the dust settle for a few days I thought I would review what happened on Sunday afternoon at Old Trafford after a little reflection, rather than all the knee-jerk reactions that I read immediately after the game. It is always amusing (in a perverse way) to read the views of West Ham fans on social media at the end of a match, especially one where we have been heavily beaten.

The two widely diverse reactions mainly consisted on one hand of those who resorted to numerous expletives about the performance of the team and various individuals, and as an alternative view, those who suggested that such opinions are way over the top, and everyone should calm down. Of course we are all entitled to our views, but it does seem to me that many of our supporters only believe that their own view is valid, and anyone who disagrees with it is wrong, or even worse, they are just f****** c***s! But to some extent, that is the way social media operates.

Some are critical of the performance and various individual players, but try to be constructive, and suggest what we need to do to improve. But they are often lambasted with comments such as “the Bilic haters are out in force” (for Bilic you can read the names of some individual players), or “you should get behind the team”, or “West Ham till I die”, or other such comments.

I was on holiday last week in one of my favourite resorts, Camp de Mar on the island of Majorca, and a couple of days before the game I watched a comedian from Liverpool. He began his act by trying to ascertain where most of the audience came from. He asked if there were any Manchester United supporters and there was quite a cheer from parts of the crowd. His next question was to ask what part of London they came from! As I sat down to watch the game in the hotel bar I picked up on quite a few London accents around me, as well as a number of individuals from other parts of the country. When the first goal went in what we already knew was confirmed, and the comedian was proved right. Manchester United do have many fans in the south.

My opinion of the game as a whole is that we were completely over-run by a team that will undoubtedly be challenging for the title this season. They are full of skilful players with power and pace, and many teams are likely to be well beaten by them this season, especially at Old Trafford. The gulf in class between the top six teams in the country (perhaps Everton hope to make it seven) and the rest is vast. Some will point to the Chelsea game and the way they were beaten by Burnley, but Chelsea were in self-destruct mode (a bit like they were the season after Mourinho last won the title), so perhaps they will not be the same force as last season. Nevertheless they still fought back against Burnley despite being outnumbered.

The chances were we were always likely to lose the game, but to stand a chance, we had to be at our best, and preferably have our best team fit and raring to go. Our opponents were able to select their team from a fully fit squad, but we went into the game (as is so often the case) with injuries to key players. Lanzini, Antonio and Kouyate (and perhaps Carroll) are all first choice players, but were all unavailable. I despair at the number of key players that always seem to be missing through injury. Perhaps if they had been without Lukaku, Pogba, Rashford and Matic the result would have been different? But with the depth of their squad perhaps not?

But from my viewpoint the sad fact is that we appeared to go into the game lacking belief that we could win, and were just there to try to hold on for a draw. But I would have hoped for more resistance. Once again though, I’m not sure I understood what our game plan was, and I’m not sure that the players were aware of it either.

When you watch sport on TV these days you are bombarded with a plethora of statistics. This has always been a feature of American sport but it has now translated to these isles. If you watch tennis they show the number of unforced errors made by each player. This statistic is not yet a feature in football, but if it was then our figures would have been alarmingly high in this game. Time and again we gave the ball away to our opponents when not really under pressure.

According to our manager the players spent three days in training in how to deal with our opponent’s set pieces. Whose idea then was it that Masuaku should be the one to mark Lukaku? And talking of free kicks, how do we manage so often to waste them in the opposition half by taking them quickly and backwards, with the ball ending up back with our keeper? And why did it take so long to realise that Hernandez is not effective a lone striker? That’s just not his game, is it? We have four experienced international central defenders at the club. Am I alone in thinking that we need more pace in this area? And do Reid and Ogbonna make an ideal combination?

The Hart knockers (Adrian fan club?) were out in force on social media after the game. I thought Hart did OK. Yes, perhaps he might have saved one of the goals, but not at least three of them as some Adrian fans were suggesting. I like Adrian; he is a decent keeper; but I cannot go overboard about his passion purely in the light of throwing his gloves on the ground to take a penalty against Everton. I thought Zabaleta did OK too. I read some criticism of his pace, but most Premier League defenders would have struggled against Rashford and (later) Martial on the day.

Both of our left backs are perhaps better going forward than defending, as is the case with many full backs these days. I do have a slight preference for Cresswell defensively though, but it’s all a matter of opinion. I am a big fan of Obiang, and the potential of Fernandes, but both seemed well off the pace on Sunday. But the cameo from Rice was excellent with statistics to back it up. The pleasing thing from my point of view was his desire for the ball, and how he looked confident and assured when he had it. I believe a run in the team would be well deserved.

Our attacking play was slow and predictable, as it was for much of last season, and many believe that part of the reason for this is our captain. He has been a great servant for the club, and hopefully will continue to be. He has never been blessed with great pace, but increasingly these days he seems to be running on sand (or in treacle!).

But as many have said; let’s not be too hasty. It was one game against a top class side. Hopefully our injury list will disappear soon and we will have a full squad to pick from. Perhaps there is more to come from this transfer window? The Carvalho saga drags on, and some reports suggest we are after other Sporting Lisbon and Benfica players. I don’t know how effective they would be in the Premier League if any of them arrive? Personally I’d love to see us spend the kind of money that is being talked about (for Carvalho) on Oxlade-Chamberlain, but doubt if it will happen (or that he would necessarily want to come!). I’d take a chance on Wilshere too if he was available at a decent price, despite his injury record. We need more creativity than relying on Lanzini.

It will be important to put in better performances against the other 12 teams who are fighting for an eighth place finish in the Premier League. The gulf between the top seven and the rest is unfortunately too wide (I believe) for us to believe we can finish any higher. I’d love to be proved wrong though.

Triskaidekaphobia in August? Not West Ham!

Unlucky for some but not for the Hammers.

Triskaidekaphobia is a morbid fear of the number 13. The number 13 has many reasons for people to believe it is unlucky. Many relate it back to the “Last Supper”, and there are examples of the bad fortune relating to the number, such as the arrest of the Knights Templar, and Apollo 13. Quite probably there are reasons to believe that almost any number is unlucky, but 13 seems to be the most popular of them, and properties in many roads and blocks of flats often don’t have a number 13.

But 13 has often been a lucky number for West Ham. West Ham have a good record in matches played on the thirteenth of the month, and in the month of August this is a particularly true fact. We have had a number of victories on this date in history, perhaps the most notable that I can recall being a 2-1 win over bitter rivals Tottenham in 1997. Goals from Berkovich and Hartson, two of our players who didn’t always see eye to eye, led to the victory in what was our second match of the 1997-98 season, both resulting in wins.

In fact we have never lost a competitive game played on August 13 in our entire history. So for any superstitious fans, we can thank the TV companies for the re-arrangement of our opening game this season at Old Trafford. Many believe that the odds are stacked against us today, but history shows that we are unbeatable on this date. So if you are looking for a reason to believe we will do well in today’s game this may be it. Let us hope that we keep up this amazing record.

Manchester United versus West Ham Preview

West Ham travel to Old Trafford for their 2017/18 season opener.

So there we have it. The pre-season fixtures have been done and dusted and we now get down to the nitty gritty of the Premier League. Of course because of the World Athletics Championships we face three fixtures away from home to begin with while they put the stadium back together again. In reality though, only one game had to be re-arranged, and that is our second match which is now a visit to the South Coast, instead of a home game against Southampton.

The opener though is just about as tough a game as we can expect, and nothing we’ve seen in pre-season leads me to expect that we can create a surprise here. The bookmakers don’t anticipate an upset, with the home side at odds of between 1/3 and 1/4, and a West Ham win quoted at between 10/1 and 12/1. You can get 4/1 on a drawn game.

Although friendly games very rarely give an indication of the real business to come, our final pre-season game in Iceland against Manchester City demonstrated very clearly the gulf in class between the very top teams, and those, like ourselves, who can really only hope to be contending for an eighth place finish. Our hosts have had an excellent pre-season including a win over City, and their only defeat was a single goal loss to Barcelona.

But you never know. Perhaps a visit to Old Trafford for the first game in the season is as good a time to visit there as any. Mourinho has added to what was already a strong squad, with their big signings of Lindelof, Matic, and our old friend Lukaku, who will be looking for his customary goal against West Ham, although to be fair we stopped him from scoring the last time he played against us for Everton in April.

The opening game can throw up some surprises, however; none more so than our visit to the Emirates the season before last when we shocked everybody with a 2-0 win. Last season we only just lost to Chelsea with a late goal from Costa, who shouldn’t really have still been on the field at the time, and they of course went on to win the league comfortably. But Manchester United began last season well with three straight wins, and every indication is that they might be even stronger contenders to finish at the top this time around.

I am writing this preview a few days in advance, as I will be watching the game in a bar in Camp de Mar in Majorca, and as such I am not sure of the likely make-up of our team, and how many injuries we will have before the season gets underway! I have a feeling that we will go into the game with a defensive 3-5-2 formation, with Fonte, Reid and Ogbonna in front of Hart in goal. Zabaleta and Masuaku could well be the wide (defensive) players in the middle (back?) five, and I would expect that Noble, Obiang and Lanzini will be the others. I would anticipate the two strikers to be Arnautavic and Hernandez. This would not necessarily be my choice of formation, but I am not paid to manage the team. If we do line up in this way then I can see us being on the back foot from the start.

Nevertheless I have dusted down my optimistic hat, and for no logical reason predict a 1-0 win, courtesy of a goal by Hernandez against the club that let him go.

West Ham Ten Years Ago Today

Memories of starting the season full of hope in August 2007 following the ‘great escape’.

Ten years ago on this day, Saturday 11 August 2007, we began our Premier League campaign with a home game against Manchester City. Just a few weeks earlier we had completed the “Great Escape” with a final day win at Old Trafford, and now under the continued management of Alan Curbishley we were embarking upon a new season with high hopes. Although Carlos Tevez had gone to Manchester United, we had made what were considered to be impressive signings in the transfer window, with new recruits Scott Parker, Freddie Llungberg, Julien Faubert, Kieron Dyer, and Craig Bellamy, who became our record signing at the time at £7.5 million. Dean Ashton was about to return after a year out with injury, and many believed a much better season would follow.

Tevez played less than 30 games for us and scored just seven goals but to many he was almost a legend. Of course, the controversy surrounding him joining us meant that we had allegedly broken third-party rules, which led to us paying an initial fine of £5.5 million pounds. Then, eighteen months later, just days before an independent FA arbitration panel was due to meet to consider a claim by Sheffield United that Tevez was instrumental in their relegation, we agreed to settle the claim by paying £30 million in instalments to the Blades. The “Tevez affair” had a profound impact upon the club for years.

Sven-Goran Eriksson, the ex-England manager, had taken over at Manchester City. Their owner, Thaksin Shinawatra, had bankrolled a big spending spree, and they had a host of new, mainly foreign, signings who made their debut that day, along with a keeper making his first appearance, Kasper Schmeichel. Two of their new signings scored the goals which beat us that day. In the first half, Elano ran through our half barely challenged, and then slid the ball across goal for Bianchi to slide in and score from about two feet. And just a couple of minutes from the end, Onuoha ran half the length of the field, evading a couple of half-hearted challenges, and laid the ball back for substitute Geovanni to hit a low drive beyond Robert Green from the edge of the area.

It was generally a rather flat performance for the opening game of the season, and although Zamora, Llungberg, Etherington, and finally Ashton had decent efforts and might have scored, City were good value for their win. After scoring the opening goal they sat back, and were relatively comfortable.

Our team that day was: Green, Spector, A. Ferdinand, Upson, McCartney, Boa Morte, Bowyer, Noble, Llungberg, Bellamy, Zamora.

Mullins and Etherington were introduced as substitutes at half time replacing Bowyer and Boa Morte, and then with just under half an hour remaining, Dean Ashton replaced McCartney.

The poor start to the season led to some changes for the next game which was won at Birmingham with a Mark Noble penalty. We went on to pick up ten points from the four games that followed the opening day defeat, and eventually finished the season in tenth place, which was one place below Manchester City and one above Tottenham.

How the make-up of the Premier League can change in ten years! Eleven of the clubs we faced that season will not be seen at top flight grounds this season. Villa, Blackburn, Portsmouth, Wigan, Bolton, Fulham, Reading, Birmingham, Derby, Middlesbrough, and Sunderland are all now in lower leagues. The only eight clubs that we faced in 2007-08 that we will meet this season, just ten years later are the teams who finished as the top seven last season, Chelsea, Tottenham, Manchester City, Liverpool, Arsenal, Manchester United, and Everton, plus newly promoted Newcastle. It would be hard to bet against those same seven clubs occupying the top seven places again this season, albeit perhaps in a slightly different order.

Ten years on, and I believe that Mark Noble and Kasper Schmeichel are the only two players who played that day who are still plying their trade in the Premier League.

Dreaming Dreams of a Top Eight Finish for West Ham

Today Under The Hammer’s Richard Bennett looks forward to the new Premier League season.

The 2017-18 season has arrived. Being a bit of a traditionalist, in the past the opening day was always one I looked forward to. All teams in the top flight would kick off at 3pm on the first Saturday, and by 5 o’clock you could see the first league table with all the teams having completed their first game. Of course, because of television that is not now the case, and this season the opening games begin on Friday evening, and continue through until Sunday, when our game at Old Trafford is the last one.

I had to smile when I saw the BBC league table where we were showing in 20^th place (because of alphabetical order) before a ball has been kicked. By Saturday evening we will have moved off the bottom provided all the games on Friday and Saturday haven’t ended in draws! And when we kick off we will know what we have to do to be top of the table at the completion of matchday 1, or alternatively what we need to do to avoid being bottom of the pile.

This is written in jest of course, because the league table doesn’t really begin to take shape until at least half a dozen games have been played by each side. But by then, it is important not to be close to the bottom, as psychologically you feel that you are in a relegation scrap from the outset if you are. By the time we reach the third international break early in November, 11 games will have been played, five at home and six away, and by then we will have a good idea how our season will pan out.

By Christmas Day we will have reached the half-way point in the season (19 games played), but unusually we won’t have played all the other 19 teams at this point. The fixtures computer usually (in recent years) arranges it so that we have played them all, but by Christmas we will have played Newcastle home and away, but not played Bournemouth at all. We play them on Boxing Day.

But is it really that difficult to predict the eventual outcome in the Premier League by the end of the season? Last season my co-weblogger Geoff Hopkins and I made a forecast before the first games were played as to where each team would finish at the end. Our predictions were relatively accurate, as we predicted the top six (though not in the correct order), and not one of our finishing positions was more than six places out from the eventual outcome. This was no great achievement because it is not hard to know roughly what will happen before a ball has been kicked. Of course we were all taken by surprise with Leicester the season before, but that was a one-off which is extremely unlikely to happen again. Going back a few years it was much harder to forecast what would happen each season.

The Premier League is actually more open than almost all the other leagues in Europe, in that before the season starts there are likely to be anything up to six teams who may be in contention for the title. Compare that to other countries where the champions will come from perhaps two or three teams at the most.

Nevertheless despite the apparent predictability, Geoff and I will forecast the finishing positions of each team in the Premier League in the form of a friendly competition (see Geoff’s prediction here.). We score 0 points if we get the finishing position spot on, or one point for each position that we are out. Like the quiz Pointless the lowest score wins. Last year our scores were 54-57, so on average we were less than three positions out for each team, confirming the predictability of the league.

Last time I predicted a seventh place finish for West Ham to match the successful season that preceded it. We eventually ended up in 11^th, although of course we were only one point behind the eighth placed team. Only six points separated 8^th from 17^th in the Premier League, so it can be close for the teams vying for the 8^th spot, which if it follows last season, will be a competition in itself, because I believe the top seven spots will already be taken. Of course I hope I am wrong, and that our pre-season fixtures are not a true indication of how we will perform. Perhaps we can do a Leicester? If you believe that then the majority of bookmakers will offer you odds of 500-1.

My forecast for 2017-18 is as follows: