Author: Richard Bennett

Geoff Hopkins summed up the Arsenal game perfectly in his article Five Cruel Lessons From Defeat @ Arsenal, and I have little to add to that. I have been following our team for almost sixty years and I had a quick look back over that time to ascertain how many times we have lost five league games in a row.

The first time it happened was in 1960-61. Ted Fenton was the manager, but he was sacked after three of the games, and a selection committee of the board were responsible for the next two losses. Ron Greenwood took over for the final four games of the season (none of which were won) and we finished 16^th (out of 22).

It happened twice when Greenwood was in charge. The first time in 1966-67, the season after England’s World Cup win, we lost seven (the most I think!) on the trot at one stage. Again we finished 16^th (out of 22). It occurred again in 1970-71 when we lost five times in a row. That season we finished 20^th (out of 22). We weren’t relegated, as only two teams went down at that time.

John Lyall also managed it twice; although neither of these happened in the two seasons we were relegated with him in charge. In 1976-77 we escaped with a 4-2 victory over Manchester United in the final game, and in 1986-87 we finished 15^th.

Billy Bonds was manager in the ill-fated Bond Scheme season (1991-92) which culminated in us finishing at the foot of the table. We lost six in a row at one stage that season. With Harry Redknapp, and more surprisingly Glenn Roeder in charge we never did manage to lose five league games in a row in any season.

In 2006-07 it happened twice, and we still avoided the drop in the season of the “Great Escape.” Firstly, it happened when Alan Pardew was manager, and he was sacked just a few weeks afterwards. Secondly, we lost five in a row under Alan Curbishley, the fifth one being the heartbreaking 4-3 loss at home to the North London neighbours who we don’t like. But after that game we won seven out of the final nine fixtures to complete a remarkable escape.

In 2009-10 under Gianfranco Zola we lost six league games in a row at one stage, and our likeable (but ineffective) manager departed soon afterwards. And then in the following season the inspirational appointment of Avram Grant by our new owners proved to be anything but, and a run of five consecutive league defeats was followed by his P45 a couple of weeks later.

Just like under Redknapp and Roeder, it didn’t happen under Big Sam, and we had to wait until this current run for it to happen under Slaven Bilic. I dread to contemplate our fate if the run extends to seven to match 1966-67!

We now need to end this losing streak, and hopefully come up with a win against struggling Swansea. After two dreadful home defeats to ourselves (4-1) and Bournemouth (3-0) to finish 2016, our visitors today went on an excellent run to move out of the relegation zone, winning five of their first eight games of 2017, which included away victories at Palace and Liverpool, and home wins over Southampton, Leicester and Burnley. The tide appeared to have turned under new manager Paul Clement, but the last four games have seen them pick up just a solitary point in a goalless home draw with fellow strugglers (and potentially doomed) Middlesbrough.

The games where they went down were 2-1 at Hull, who are having a bit of a revival themselves under a new manager who hasn’t lost at home (for years!), and 2-0 at Bournemouth. And then finally in midweek they looked to have sewn up three valuable points against our disliked aforementioned friends from North London, only for them to concede three heartbreaking goals in the 89^th, 92^nd and 95^th minutes, and as a consequence slip back into the relegation zone. It is unusual (almost unheard of) for me to cheer Tottenham goals but I have to admit that I did on Wednesday night. The late turnaround meant that we go into the game today five points ahead of them (and so the drop zone too), instead of the three points gap that was prematurely quoted on social media by so many of our Twitter followers prior to the final whistle.

One quote that I read today, was that teams who have conceded at least 66 goals after 31 games in a Premier League season have always been relegated. For anyone who wasn’t aware of this (well known!!) statistic, it has happened six times before to Swindon, Barnsley, Fulham, Ipswich and Wolves (twice).

Their top scorer Llorente is likely to return after injury and there could be an Ayew playing for both sides. It would be good to see Jordan Ayew repeat his performance for Villa against us at Upton Park when he, unprovoked, for no apparent reason elbowed Cresswell in full view of everybody and had an early bath (showers these days!). Sigurdsson is an extremely talented player, and one of the few that I have seen us linked with in the past who I would like to see in our side.

The last two fixtures between us have ended 4-1 to the away side. Few can forget how they gave us a drubbing in the penultimate game held at (fortress!) Upton Park, but we repeated that feat ourselves on Boxing Day just over three months ago with goals from Ayew (his first for us), Reid, Antonio and Carroll.

In view of the importance of this game, described as a massive six-pointer, I expect a nervy game, especially in view of the recent form of both sides. I don’t expect a third 4-1 in a row, but hope that we can halt our recent slide down the table and edge the game by the odd goal in three. I anticipate quite an atmosphere, especially if we can score the first goal, and you never know, a win today and at Sunderland next week, and with other results going our way, we could find ourselves back in the top half of the table by next weekend! I’m not sure that’s where we deserve to be, but, as they say, the league table never lies!

And for all West Ham fans, a topical selection in today’s Grand National, Blaklion, who will carry a few of my hard earned pounds!

Four consecutive defeats in a row. Two points from the last six league games. Tough statistics to look at, so we now need an easy fixture to turn the tide. And what could be better than a visit to the Emirates where we comfortably won last season, 2-0?

But first, back to the Hull game. Once again my belief in statistics often having little bearing on the outcome of a game was proved to be a sound one in a number of areas. We took the lead, and most teams that do this go on to win the game. A quick look back through the season, and I reckon that we have dropped around 20 points from a winning position. Without checking on all teams in the league, I think it would be safe to assume that no club has a worse record than that.

I haven’t counted up how many goals we have conceded from set pieces, but the Hull winner was headed in direct from a corner. In our recent winless run it happened twice against Leicester, once against both West Brom and Bournemouth, and again in this game. Why can we not defend set pieces? Time and time again this happens. Do we practice defending set pieces, especially corners at training sessions? Who is responsible for our defence coaching? Why can’t we learn from our mistakes? Rumour has it that Rio Ferdinand offered his services to assist with our defence coaching and was turned down. If that is true, then I find it amazing that we could reject such an offer with the state of our defending. Or are our players just not good enough? If we are not top of the league in conceding goals from set pieces then I’ll bet we are at least in a Champions League position.

Once again we conceded a relatively late goal. How many times have we conceded goals in the last few minutes of games? How many teams have let in more goals in the last ten minutes? I don’t have the figures but I reckon we will be close to the top of this league too. We have now conceded 54 league goals. That puts us in the top 3 of that statistic too. Even Sunderland and Middlesbrough, the two favourites for the drop with the bookies, have let in fewer goals than we have.

OK, so we had more possession than Hull, completed more passes, had more shots, and more shots on target. It doesn’t matter. We lost the game. By all accounts it was arguably Hull’s worst performance in recent games. But it didn’t matter did it? They are now just 6 points behind us. And it could conceivably be just 3 after this midweek round of games. We now have just six clubs beneath us in the table, and it could possibly be 4 before we face Swansea next weekend in a game that is now taking on massive importance for us. A few weeks ago we surely couldn’t have envisaged this game as a “six pointer”. And we all remember what happened when they visited “fortress Upton Park” in our penultimate game there last season, don’t we?

But we won’t go down. Just consider the bookies odds. The bottom three are all odds-on to be relegated, and Swansea are just a shade better than evens. We are quoted as seventh favourites to go down at around 20-1. Bookies never get it wrong do they? They knew Trump would win in America, and the result of the referendum on Brexit would be Leave, and that the Tories would win the last election with an overall majority, didn’t they? Mmmmm!

I’m afraid I’ve lost my optimistic hat, and fear for us against Arsenal. Ignoring last season, they often give us a bit of a hammering at their place, and I noticed they withdrew Theo Walcott before the end of their game against Manchester City last weekend to keep him fresh for his usual goal or two against us. Can we match his pace with our defence? I’m surprised they didn’t try to buy back Podolski in the last transfer window to save him for the West Ham fixture where he frequently did well.

All season I’ve been predicting victories for us, often without any real evidence other than my support of the team, and my trusty optimistic hat, to back it up. This time I think we could be on the end of a big defeat. Arsenal haven’t had a good season themselves, but still retain a chance, albeit a receding one, of finishing in the top four for the 21^st season in a row, or whatever the number is. It is looking extremely likely that they will finish fifth or sixth. Their fans are not happy and want the manager out. Or at least quite a number of them do according to various polls. Our manager still retains a good level of support considering the season we’ve had, but increasingly some fans are turning. And this week he received a vote of confidence from the board. And we all know what frequently happens shortly after that, don’t we?

I am hoping for an unlikely win, but fear that we will do well to keep Arsenal down to three. Perhaps my hope can overcome my fear? What are the chances? The bookies give us around an 8-1 chance of winning the game. That’s not very generous based on our recent form. But who knows? Perhaps we will keep a clean sheet and Carroll will add to his 50 Premier League goals tally? Carroll to score the first goal and a repeat of last season’s 2-0 win is 275-1. Worth a few bob?

At last the Premier League is back. OK I know it is only a fortnight since our last game, but it seems like an age, especially when you have sat through the tedium of England trying to break down the world-renowned defence of Lithuania. Fortunately, one of our ex-players, Jermaine Defoe, knows how to put the ball in the net.

And talking of tedium I am well and truly brassed off by the continual coverage on TV of the forthcoming (in about two years time at least) UK exit from the EU. I know this may well be momentous in our history, but I get very bored by news programmes showing the letter from our Prime Minister making its way to Brussels via the Channel Tunnel, and the continual speculation of how the negotiations might go. Let us just wait and see. And the jargon! Hard Brexit, soft Brexit, extreme Brexit, trigger, Article 50. I think I’ve heard the word “trigger” more times in the last few weeks than if I watched a whole box set of all the Only Fools and Horses episodes, or a re-run of all the Roy Rogers western films (ask an oldie!).

So what is the connection between our visit to Hull and Brexit? Although we only began the formal process of withdrawal from the EU with the triggering of Article 50 last Wednesday, one of the issues that will need to be resolved and agreed as part of the negotiations is the right of EU nationals to live and work in the UK. Some Premier League clubs might be affected more than others if we end up with a “hard Brexit”.

To date this season, 38% of Premier League appearances have been by non-UK EU nationals. But there is a massive variation by club. Chelsea top the list with 74%, followed by Manchester City with 59%, and then ourselves with 57%. On the face of it, when I look at our squad I find it hard to reconcile these figures, but according to http://www.football.london, that is the case. On the other hand, our opponents this weekend, Hull, would potentially be the least affected, as, along with Burnley, only 5% of appearances have been by non-UK EU nationals. The numbers may appear higher than one might expect, but a number of players have EU dual nationality e.g. Luiz (Chelsea) Brazilian / Portuguese, and in time these may be affected. To be honest, I can’t see it being an issue, but some believe it might. Again, we’ll just have to wait and see.

With just nine games of the season to go Hull are in trouble. They have won just six of their 29 games, and are currently three points adrift of safety. In addition they have the worst goal difference in the league (-32). It all looked so different for them with victories in their first two games of the season (against defending champions Leicester, and then away at Swansea), meaning they were joint top of the league at that early stage. But since then they have only recorded four further wins, all at home (to Southampton, Bournemouth, Liverpool and Swansea). Like ourselves they have drawn 6 games, so the only difference between West Ham and Hull this season is that we have won three more games than them, and lost three fewer. So, if we had lost three of the games that we won (think back, it could have easily happened!), then we would be where they are now!

Some say we have enough points in the bag already, but defeat in this game would leave us just six points (two wins) ahead of Hull who will still be in the bottom three. With games running out, we probably are OK already, but we need a win or two to be absolutely certain, and victory would be a timely boost. Defeat would mean four losses in a row, and no win for more than two months, hardly good news for the manager in discussions with the board regarding his future.

And finally, as a long term advocate of video assistant referees, I was pleased with the successful use of technology (as part of the official trial of its use), in the Spain victory over France in the international friendly in Paris this week. Firstly, Griezmann scored a goal for France which was offside, but the linesman didn’t raise his flag. The goal was disallowed by the video assistant who could see clearly that he was offside. Secondly, the reverse happened, as Spain’s second goal was flagged for offside (wrongly as seen on video), and the goal was awarded quite correctly. Video technology detractors are worried about the potential effect on the flow of the game, but both decisions were made in an instant and didn’t affect the flow whatsoever. What is more, two incorrect decisions which would have had an important effect on the result of the game were overturned. FIFA are considering the introduction of video technology in time for the 2018 World Cup in Russia. It can’t come soon enough in the Premier League in my opinion. How many additional points might we have gained in the last two or three seasons if it had been in use?