Category: Preview

With Christmas approaching fast I was reminded this week of the famous Christmas poem “A Visit from St. Nicholas” which later became more famously known as “Twas The Night Before Christmas”. It was reputedly written by Clement Clarke Moore who was an American professor of Divinity and Biblical Learning in New York in the early nineteenth century, although it is still debated as to whether or not he actually wrote it.

Last season when I wrote a regular column in the fanzine Over Land and Sea, I was inspired to try to emulate his writing suitably adapted for the Chelsea game, which we won 2-1. You remember the one where Mourinho was still in charge and sent off at half-time. There was a picture of a forlorn looking Chelsea manager (although for not much longer after the game) standing in the directors’ box area as his side were comprehensively beaten with goals from Zarate and substitute Carroll. It seems a long time ago now, but it was only just over a year ago. The poem actually ended with the 2-1 prediction for the game, which won me some money on the day when I placed a small wager at 16/1.

I also included the poem in my book, Goodbye Upton Park, Hello Stratford, which incidentally is available in paperback or Kindle on Amazon. So if you are looking for a Christmas present for a West Ham fan, and don’t want to shell out megabucks for a piece of the Upton Park turf in a glass case, or a plastic seat from the Betway stand, then look no further. I have been a regular at Upton Park for almost sixty years, and the book chronicles the last famous season there.

Anyway, as we won the game, I was once again motivated to write a similar poem for the visit of Everton. We drew that game, so my record of adapting this famous poem was an unbeaten one. In view of the potential difficulty of this week’s visit to White Hart Lane, I decided to try once again, and the resulting effort of my preview to the game is below.

‘Twas the night before Tottenham when all through the house
Not a creature was stirring not even a mouse;

In our last game, the visit of Stoke;
Another home draw, the table’s no joke;
In seventeenth place, after Adrian’s error;
We need some more points, we must play much better;

The game’s at the Lane, with tough games to come;
Just one year ago, they ‘Kaned’ us 4-1;
Revenge came in March, our tactics were clever;
We beat them 1-0 with Antonio’s header;
Going for the title, it was really absurd;
They faded away, and fell down to third;

This season unbeaten, a close title race;
But too many draws, they’re down in fifth place;
Our record at their place is generally poor;
But remember ’81, when Psycho scored four;

In 2013 we were close to the bottom;
We went there twice, you can’t have forgotten;
Morrison’s goal was one of the best;
Vaz Te and Reid, you know the rest;
And then in the League Cup there was never a doubt;
A Maiga header, and Tottenham were out;

93-94 was not our best season;
A very poor start was part of the reason;
They beat us at our place, 3-1 was the score;
But when we went there we managed four;

About ten years ago, I remember it well;
Last game of the season and we gave them hell;
They were close to the top and well in the reckoning;
A win against us, and Europe was beckoning;

They stayed at the Marriott, their pre-match hotel;
But a dodgy lasagne had left them unwell;
Carl Fletcher scored first, Defoe made it 1-1;
But then up popped Yossi, and Tottenham were done.

Kane has been injured, he’s been in the wars;
But Son has come in and sometimes he scores;
But now Kane is back, there’s no time for flapping;
With Walker and Rose, full backs overlapping;

Eriksen and Lamela are always a danger,
And Dele Alli can be a game changer;
Lloris is in goal, the keeper for France,
I’ve looked at the odds, they give us no chance;

Our season so far, a brief aberration?
I wonder if Bilic will change the formation?
Lanzini and Payet have not been their best;
And Tottenham away will be quite a test;

We need to start quickly, incisive and fast,
Be first to the ball, and not be the last;
Play a high tempo, and keep up the pace;
Hustle and chase, and look for a space;

I know they’re our neighbours, but there’s no love lost;
We must raise our game or lose to our cost;
The optimist in me says go for the kill,
Obiang to score and we’ll win it one-nil.

A game at the heavily scrutinised London Stadium on a day known for fires and explosions – what could possibly go wrong?  Today’s visitors are the mostly harmless Stoke City who after a disastrous start to the season come to London today unbeaten in their last 5 matches.  Known as the Potters after the eponymous boy wizard (itself is a reference to Stoke’s most famous ever player, wizard of the dribble, Stanley Matthews) the club is competing in their 9th consecutive Premier League campaign following the promotion in 2008 which ended a 23 year ‘spell’ in the wilderness.  When Stoke were relegated in 1985 they did so with a record low number of points for the 22 team, 3 points-a-win top flight.

“I would rather have us creating chances and waiting for a moment to convert them than not create them at all. We are disappointed with the Everton result but we are on a good path, we are there, and we are going to score goals.”

– Slaven Bilic

A game that we will be very much hoping to win as our theoretical easier run of games comes to halt just before yet another international break and a chance to do the Christmas shopping.  A few West Ham – Stoke connections that spring to mind are that Geoff Hurst played for both clubs, Lou Macari managed both and both were briefly owned by Icelandics at some point in their history.

Head to Head

Another close run head to head record that shows an emphasis on home victories with Stoke’s visits to the capital being as fruitless as our ventures to the north-westwards.  Two of their seven victories have, however, been in the last six encounters. History reveals a healthy goal haul from home games against the Potters which hopefully can be repeated this afternoon.

	P	W	D	L	F	A	Sequence
Home	40	20	13	7	70	35	DDLDWW
Away	41	11	8	22	43	62	LDLWLD
	81	31	21	29	113	97

Team News

Winston Reid is suspended  and injured although the latter might just be a convenient excuse to avoid travelling down under for two World Cup fixtures against New Caledonia.  Potential replacement Reece Oxford has also picked up an injury which opens the door for the more probable replacement James Collins and his silky passing skills.  With still no striker to speak of available our sources (I read it on the internet) suggest that there will be a return to the starting lineup for Andre Ayew with Edmilson Fernandes dropping out.  While welcoming Ayew’s return it would be disappointing for Fernandes, one of our better players last week, to be demoted to the bench.  Slav says the players now feel at home at the London Stadium but I get the impression that he is trying to convince himself that everything is going to be alright rather than anything else.

“We’re looking forward to every game we play now because we’re playing some good stuff now and we’re playing with confidence.”

– Mark Hughes

Stoke have Arnautovic missing through suspension with Shaqiri doubtful and a few other longer term injuries including Butland, Cameron and Johnson.  Danger men are Bony, who open his Stoke account last week against former club Swansea, and Joe Allen.

Man in the Middle

Andre Marriner from Birmingham is today’s top official.  This is his 7th Premier League game of the season during which time he has brandished 1 red and 24 yellow cards whilst at the same time missing Aguero’s elbow assault on Winston Reid at the Etihad.

Embed from Getty Images

I can honestly say that the game against Stoke is not the one that I look for when the fixtures schedule is released in the middle of June each year. In fact I think that when Tony Pulis was in charge, it was probably the game that I least looked forward to. I have never been a fan of watching Pulis’ teams play, and West Brom have now assumed the Stoke mantle for me. Perhaps many West Brom fans feel the same judging by the empty seating in last week’s game at the Hawthorns? Those fans who have been watching for a few years will probably remember the Rory Delap long throw tactic. Stoke would do all they could to attain throw-ins in the opposition half, and then Delap would spend an age drying the ball before launching a long throw into the penalty area, with his team mates blocking off defenders as if it were a game of American Football. Somehow they got away with it, and often went unpunished by referees.

But Stoke under Mark Hughes are different, although they still retain some players who play the game in the same way they did under Pulis, especially Shawcross and Walters. In my opinion Shawcross has always been one of the most over-rated central defenders in the Premier League, and I could never understand the clamour in the media to get him called up into the England squad. That appears to have died down in recent times though. He is one of those defenders often referred to as uncompromising, although I could think of other adjectives to describe his methods.

Last December at Upton Park the game ended goalless, but of all the 0-0 games I have ever seen this one was one of the best. Both sides played entertaining stuff and were applauded off at the finish. There were 34 shots in the game, of which we had 22, and there was a grandstand finish where we almost nicked the points. One of the reasons we didn’t win was the superlative goalkeeping of Jack Butland. He got injured playing for England in a later game, and has been out for a long time. I think they, and England, miss him

When I look back over the past fifty years or more I don’t have great memories of watching us play Stoke. At the Britannia Stadium, in the final game of last season we took the lead and had control of the game. We conceded an equaliser against the run of play and then lost the game right at the death. We pulverised them in the first half but only had a solitary goal at the interval for our endeavours. It should have been three or four with the game wrapped up. We missed stacks of chances, and Stoke cleared about four off the line. One was only an inch or so from being a goal but it just wasn’t going to be our day. In some ways we missed Payet, but we created so many chances it shouldn’t have mattered. We had more than twenty shots on goal to Stoke’s half a dozen.

Going back almost fifty years, in 1967-68 we were 3-0 up at half-time in a league game at Upton Park and we let Stoke back into the game to win 4-3. Two seasons later, almost to the day we were once again 3-0 up at half time, and Stoke fought back to draw 3-3 and were just denied a late winner with a shot that came back off the post! In 1971-72 we met them in the League Cup semi-final that went to four games that had everything (they didn’t have penalty shoot-outs in those days). We won the first leg away 2-1, but Stoke won 1-0 in the second leg at Upton Park when Gordon Banks saved a late-in-the-game Geoff Hurst penalty and it went to a replay. The first replay was drawn and we then lost an incredible second replay 3-2. I can also remember visiting their old stadium, the Victoria Ground in 1973. All I can recall is that a smallish crowd made a lot of noise, and we lost the game 2-0.

In some ways, their start to this season has mirrored our own. They began with a draw at Middlesbrough, and then lost four games in a row, conceding four goals in each of three of those fixtures. They followed this with two more draws, before a recent run of three consecutive victories, albeit against Sunderland, Hull and Swansea, the three teams currently occupying the relegation places. As I knew we were playing them this weekend I watched some of their 3-1 win over Swansea on the Monday night football on Sky. They looked quite impressive, especially Bony who scored twice, and Allen, who has scored four goals from midfield this season. Arnautovic will be missing serving a one match ban, whilst Shaqiri is a doubt for the game.

We haven’t actually beaten Stoke at home since March 2011 when our three goalscorers were Demba Ba, Da Costa, and Hitzlesperger. Where are those three ex-players now? The last time we did record a victory over them was in March 2013 when Jack Collison scored the only goal in the game at the Britannia. But since then we have played them six times in total, drawing three and losing three. Since returning to the Premier League our home record against them has been three draws and one loss, so it is about time we put an end to this run.

They currently sit in twelfth place in the table (to our seventeenth), but are only two points ahead of us, so a victory would take us above them, and we could in theory be in the top half of the table by Saturday evening if other results went our way, although this is unlikely. But with our difficult run of fixtures after the international break, three points would be most welcome, and I predict that we will win a tight game by the odd goal, perhaps 1-0 or 2-1.

Last season’s victory at Everton put the seal on a season long respite from the traditional northwest travel sickness with a once in a lifetime haul of three wins and a draw from the away-day excursions to Liverpool and Manchester. Defeat by Manchester City means that it is a feat that cannot be matched this time around but today is an opportunity to see if the cure was purely temporary.

West Ham go into the game looking for a third league win on the bounce (four in all competitions) while Everton after a bright start to the season under Ronald Koeman have not won any of their last 5 outings. Victory at Goodison last March was the last time West Ham won three league games in a row and so the omens are good but remember they usually lure us with hope and leave us disappointed.

“So he is always scoring against us, unfortunately, so that’s also going to be interesting. It will be a great game. They need points. We need points.”

– Slaven Bilic on Lukaku

The game last season was the classic game of two halves (or more accurately a game of the first 78 minutes and the final 12). For most of the match we were poor against an Everton side who were reduced to 10 men just after the half hour until some strange Martinez substitutions handed the initiative to the Hammers with three late goals and an unlikely 3-2 victory. Re-live the entertainment below and for the ‘twitchers’ among you there is a rare sighting of Carroll and Sakho on the pitch at the same time.

Head to Head

Everton have dominated the encounters between the two clubs and until last March had been unbeaten against West Ham in 15 matches. If history is anything to go by a visit to Goodison usually ends in a heavy defeat; Everton having averaged 2 goals per game on their own turf..

	P	W	D	L	F	A	Sequence
Home	63	23	17	23	95	92	DLDLLD
Away	61	11	13	37	50	122	WDLLLD
	124	34	30	60	145	214

Team News

No new injury concerns for West Ham and no return to fitness from any long term treatment room residents as yet. It would be a major surprise if the team that started against Chelsea was not the same one that starts today but with Adrian back between the sticks. It would mean that the striker conundrum remains unresolved but allows room for the many suddenly in-form midfield players which now also appears much better balanced as a unit. We will most probably see a further 20 minute run-out for Andre Ayew as he continues his return to full match fitness.  The slight concern of three at the back is against fast breaking teams who are strong on the flanks. Definitely something to watch out for against Everton although Koeman is far more cautious than his predecessor and has focused on improving his team’s defensive capabilities with some, although not total, initial success.

“Overall I’m happy with the defensive organisation but I’m not happy with the offensive aspect. We need to improve and be more clinical and have more productivity.  That’s what we need to change.”

– Ronald Koeman

Everton are without dirty James McCarthy and Leighton Baines is apparently doubtful. We can hope that Lukaku stubs his toe or slips over in the shower this morning otherwise we will need to score at least twice to claim all three points.

As ever I am hoping for a win but would settle for a point in a game where I believe both teams will score.

The Man in the Middle

Today’s referee is Anthony Taylor from just down the road in Greater Manchester. He was also in charge of this fixture last season where he sent off Kevin Mirallas for two bookable offences; another positive and enticing omen. Taylor was also holding the cards in our season opener at Chelsea in August when he failed to wave one in the direction of eventual match-winner Diego Costa following his assault on Adrian.

We go into this game on the back of three consecutive victories, and if we manage at least a point then we will have remained unbeaten in five games, which cover the whole of the month of October. After a disastrous beginning to the season then this is exactly what we needed. With a home game next week against Stoke City, we have the opportunity to put ourselves in a reasonable position in the league before the next international break. When we entered the last break, after seven league games, we had amassed just four points including only one victory.

We needed that break to re-charge, re-think, and work out how we could improve our performances to ensure that we did not become involved in the relegation dogfight. Of course we are not yet in a comfortable league position, and need to consolidate the recent improvement before the run of difficult games that will follow immediately after the next fortnight recess from league football. The four games that come after the interval include visits to Tottenham, Manchester United and Liverpool with just one solitary home game against Arsenal.

It is therefore vital to get something from the next two games, and then hope to spring a surprise or two in the tough fixtures. We then have relatively easier games at home to Burnley and Hull, and away at Swansea and Leicester. At that point we will have reached the end of 2016, and be exactly half way through the season.

At the equivalent stage last season we had 29 points. To reach a similar total in this campaign would require 19 points in the next ten games, of which just four are at home and six away, including the Everton game. That could be achieved with six wins, a draw, and three defeats, or alternatively five wins, four draws and just one reverse. Despite our recent improvement this scenario seems very unlikely, and if we can get anywhere close to our halfway points total last term then we will have done well.

Of course we improved still further in the second half of last season, with 33 points in the final 19 games to finish on 62 in seventh place. We will be looking for a similar upturn this time around.

Everton, on the other hand, come into this fixture on a run of five games without a win. Their early season sparkling form seems to have disappeared, although they still sit in sixth place in the table. Their new manager, Ronald Koeman appears to have halted their relatively poor defensive record under Martinez, especially at home, and the eight goals that they have conceded to date in all league games is the second best record in the division so far. Last season they conceded 30 goals in their 19 home games, a total only exceeded by Aston Villa and Bournemouth. This, of course, includes the three late goals that we put into their net in a dramatic comeback in March.

Their top scorer this term with six goals is, unsurprisingly, Lukaku, and he has netted eight times in eight games against us. He always seems to score against us and is a good bet to be the first goalscorer in the game. In fact he is odds-on with bookmakers to score against us at any time in the game, and given his previous record we cannot be surprised by that. We also need to beware of Cleverley, who, despite being a midfielder who does not have a particularly great goalscoring record (around 25 goals in approaching 200 senior games in his career), has scored against us for three different teams (for Wigan, Villa, and Manchester United).

If we can keep Lukaku quiet, and at the same time play with the same level of intensity and desire that we showed against Chelsea, then I am hopeful that we will get something from the game. A win would be great, but my prediction is for Lukaku to open the scoring, and then for Antonio to end his recent goalscoring drought, and the game to finish 1-1. Antonio hasn’t scored since netting five times in our opening four league games, which is surprising considering our improved performances of late. But that’s the way it goes sometimes, and I’m sure his goalless run will end soon.

I hope that Bilic retains the same team that played in midweek, and I also hope that my forecast for the result will be wrong, and that perhaps Ayew will come off the bench to score a late winner in a 2-1 victory. Perhaps the Everton players will get nervous thinking about last season, and remember our storming finish to win the game.

What are the chances?

As I wrote prior to the last round of the competition, our two realistic chances of a trophy before the season began, and now our only two opportunities, come in the domestic cup competitions. And when you analyse the competitions in detail, you realise how relatively easy they should be to win. The EFL Cup can be won by getting through four rounds of football and then winning the final at Wembley. Sounds easy doesn’t it? To be handed a draw at home to Accrington Stanley of League Two should have been a very easy passage into the last 16, but, although we made it in the end, we made heavy weather of it.

Prior to the last round we were the seventh or eighth favourites to land the trophy (you could get odds of between 14/1 and 20/1), so the bookmakers at that time fancied our chances more than some teams higher than us in the Premier League. Now, with just sixteen teams remaining, and just one home game away from a place in the quarter-final our odds have drifted to 25/1, making us eighth favourites to land the trophy. Chelsea are fourth favourites at 11/2, so you can see who the bookmakers believe are going to win this tie. And it’s not as if Chelsea are pulling up trees themselves this season.

Recent history gives us a chance. Although they beat us with a very late goal in the opening match of this season at Stamford Bridge (by a player who should not have still been on the pitch at the time!), we won the last encounter at Upton Park on 24 October last year with goals from Zarate and substitute Carroll. This win was one that hastened the departure of Jose Mourinho. Do you recall those forlorn photographs of him standing in front of the directors’ box after he had been sent off by the referee.

The only time that we have met them in a League Cup tie at Upton Park was in the third round of the 1994-95 competition, on October 26 1994. Don Hutchison scored the goal that enabled us to progress to the next round (where we were eliminated by Bolton!). Of course we have never won the competition ourselves, but Chelsea have won it five times, most recently in 2015. Our two friends, Terry and Costa scored the goals that beat our other friends from White Hart Lane 2-0.

In 2004 (October 27), when we were only in the Championship, we met them in this round at Stamford Bridge and they ran out winners 1-0. They went on to win the trophy that year beating Liverpool in the Final. They were also the runaway champions of the Premier League that season, winning by a dozen points, and only losing one league match in the process. So our narrow defeat, given our position at the time, was a noteworthy performance.

By coincidence we meet them once again on October 26. Despite our relatively poor form this season, this is a one-off cup tie and anything can happen. Hopefully we can take advantage of the home draw and progress into the last eight.

Fresh from the encouraging win against Crystal Palace last weekend Hammer’s supporters will be looking for the same professionalism and panache as West Ham entertain lowly Sunderland at the London Stadium today.  Without a win all season and just two draws in their account the visitors look almost as miserable as the look on their manager’s face.  If ever a team reflected the manager’s personality on the pitch then it is the Black Cats.

David Moyes is Sunderland’s 13th manager (plus a couple of caretakers) this century and is the epitome of the dour Scotsman; like the one who has won the lottery and then admonishes himself for buying a second ticket.  History would suggest that he won’t be at the Stadium of Light this time next year when in reality Sunderland need to stick with someone for a few years to sort themselves out.  A biggish stadium does not make a big club and there seems to be a lot wrong at the club as their perennial struggles and unlikely great escapes implies.

“It was good in the camp two or three weeks ago. We didn’t stop training but of course it’s a better mood because the confidence is back, in a positive way.”

– Slaven Bilic

Anything other than a convincing West Ham win today will be a huge disappointment.  We took four points off the Black Cats last season but were quite fortunate to do so; with the drawn away game hinging on a sending off after limply going 2-0 down and the home game a narrow and scrappy 1-0 victory.  We need to see more of the high tempo, quick passing and movement from last week and avoid a return to the ponderous build up that has characterised the majority of the season.

Head to Head

Our Head to Head record with Sunderland was another which I believed would be firmly to our advantage when in fact it is almost level pegging.  My instinct was that it this is a fixture where we routinely rattle in the goals but I guess that is merely the claret and blue spectacles playing havoc with my rear-view perception.

	P	W	D	L	F	A	Sequence
Home	42	18	14	10	79	50	WWDDLW
Away	44	13	11	20	54	71	DDWLLW
	86	31	25	30	133	121

West Ham have won three of the last six home fixture while the last Sunderland away success came in a 3-0 victory in the very final game of the woeful Avram Grant season.

Team News

By rights we should have been expecting an unchanged team from the previous match but, sadly, incompetent refereeing means that Aaron Cresswell sits this one out.  Andre Ayew is back in training but remains some way away from a recall while the recuperation of Carroll and Sakho is following a ‘tomorrow never comes’ regime; it seems that we have devised a new position of the ‘False Substitute’ which will be making Pep very jealous.

Gaun yersel’, haud yer wheesht.  Shut yer geggy, whit’s fur ye’ll no go by ye.  Away an bile yer heid.

– David Moyes

I expect the starting line-up will be as last week, retaining three at the back, with Arbeloa coming in for Cresswell.  It will not be as effective without Cresswell’s exceptional forward and link up play but is the best fit to build on the momentum of last week.  I wonder what the odds are on Zaza to emulate Geoff Hurst and score 6 goals?

Sunderland will include pantomime villain Jermaine Defoe in their line-up.  Still one of the best finishers in the Premier League I assume the defence are well aware that whatever else happens he mustn’t score.

Man in the Middle

Today’s referee is Robert ‘Bobby’ Madely from West Yorkshire.  Madely was in charge of West Ham on three occasions last season including the fine wins away at Manchester City and at home to Liverpool.  The other game, the 2-2 draw at Stamford Bridge, was less auspicious as his various blunders cost the Hammers another memorable away success.  Madely is in fine yellow card form this season with 30 bookings from 6 games.

When we set off for Upton Park on October 19 1968 I am not sure we knew what to expect that afternoon. When we were travelling from home to the game, on those Saturdays when we weren’t playing football for Barking Abbey School in the morning, we caught the British Rail train from Rainham to Barking, then met others for the two-stop trip on the District Line to Upton Park. Last season I made the same trip to a game, visiting memory lane (and Ferry Lane), and have to confess that not much has changed in the intervening forty-eight years. The overground trains now have automatic doors and are quieter, but Rainham Station, Barking Station, the District Line, Upton Park Station and Green Street all looked and smelt just the same as they did when we were young teenagers.

In mid-October 1968, fourteen games of the season had been played and we sat in sixth place in Division One. For younger readers that was the top division, equivalent to the Premier League today. The amazing thing about our league position was that we had not won a league game since August. In August itself we were on fire, although that was not an expression we used in the 1960s. There were seven league games in the first month of the season, and we won five of them, drew one, but lost heavily 4-1 to Everton on a warm Monday evening. In those seven games we had scored sixteen goals and conceded six, so apart from the Everton game we were scoring goals and defending well.

As September began, we had briefly topped the league, and we then thrashed Bolton 7-2 in the League Cup. What we didn’t know was that throughout the rest of September, and the first half of October we would play seven league games without winning a single one (although we did draw five of them), and also get dumped out of the League Cup by Coventry after a replay.

So we weren’t expecting anything particularly special that Saturday afternoon when Sunderland were the visitors, and as Autumn days were getting colder, less than 25,000 turned up, which was to be one of the lowest crowds of the season. As the half hour point of the match approached we still hadn’t seen anything special, although we were on top. Martin Peters crossed the ball and Geoff Hurst punched the ball into the net. From our position on the North Bank (at the other end of the ground) we thought he had handled the ball, but there were no protests from the visitors, the referee didn’t spot it, and we were 1-0 up.

Bobby Moore then smashed home a free kick to double the lead, Brooking crossed for Hurst to head home the third goal, and then a Harry Redknapp corner was turned in by Hurst shortly before half-time to make it 4-0. The hat-trick goal is shown in the photograph. Fifteen minutes before we hadn’t seen it coming, but here we were at half-time, a Hurst hat-trick, and 4-0 up.

We turned on the style in the second half. We were hoping that the first half goals would not be the end of the story, and that we would witness more of the same at our end of the ground. We were not disappointed. Two further goals from Hurst were followed by a netbuster from Brooking, before a Redknapp cross was finished by Hurst to make it 8-0, and a double hat-trick from the best centre-forward I have ever seen wearing a claret and blue shirt. I had never seen anybody score six goals in a game, and I am not sure that it has ever been done in the top division of English football since that day. Three years earlier I had witnessed Brian Dear scoring five goals in a game for us, but Geoff Hurst had gone one better.

We are meeting Sunderland this weekend almost 48 years to the day since that memorable game in 1968. We were both in the top half of the table when we met all those years ago, but this time the opposite is the case, and we both desperately need the points. If the game is still goalless as the half hour approaches don’t despair. There is still time for us to rattle in eight goals before the final whistle!

Embed from Getty Images

After winning the away game at Palace last October (on exactly the same weekend as this season) by three goals to one, with goals from Jenkinson, Lanzini, and Payet, we looked well set to repeat the feat when we met them at Upton Park in the return fixture in April. In the home fixture, after conceding an early goal following a mistake from Adrian,  Lanzini scored our first, and then Payet scored with one of his sublime free-kicks, this one going to the same side where the Palace keeper was standing. The match changed when Kouyate was sent off in the second half, and then Palace equalised a few minutes later. The decision was harsh and was later rescinded on appeal. But it was too late then for us to win this game!

The referee in both of the games was Mark Clattenburg. At Selhurst Park he sent off a Palace player, so he evened it up by sending off one of our players in the return. In fact he has quite a record of dismissing players in games when he referees us, although he is not on a par with Jonathan Moss.

Last season was a season of two halves for Palace. At Christmas they sat in fifth place in the Premier League, but in the New Year they came down with the Christmas decorations (a feat we have managed once or twice, though not as often as some people believe). By the time we met them at the beginning of April they had plummeted to fifteenth and were on the verge of getting involved in the relegation dogfight. But they were OK in the end, and also reached the Cup Final where they (unluckily?) lost to a late goal against Manchester United, a game remembered for the Pardew dance when Palace scored.

We’ve only met the Eagles 22 times in league games in the top flight of English football, mainly because they have not often been in the top division until recent times. We have won nine of the games, drawn eight, and lost just five. Only two of those five defeats have been at Selhurst Park, in 1995 and 2013, on both occasions by the only goal in the game. This will be our sixth top flight game against them in the month of October and they have never beaten us in this month of the year; in fact they’ve only drawn once. So that’s a good omen. Or perhaps it is not?

I’ve been to Selhurst Park twice. The first time was in October 1970 when we drew 1-1 thanks to a goal from Bobby Howe. I was back there the following October when Rod Stewart topped the charts with Maggie May. We won the game comfortably 3-0, with goals from Ade Coker, Billy Bonds and Clyde Best. Back in those days the Palace colours were actually claret and blue, but shortly afterwards they changed to the red and blue you see today.

Do you know what the most popular score in West Ham league matches last season? Very unusually it was 2-2. We drew more matches 2-2 than any other team in the Premier League. It happened seven times. Manchester United didn’t manage a single 2-2 draw. In three seasons in the Premier League under Sam Allardyce we only had four 2-2 draws. In total in 2015-16 we drew 14 of our 38 games (37%), which was more than any other team in the Premier League.

Last season against Palace we won 3-1 away and drew 2-2 at home. The season before that we won 3-1 away and lost 3-1 at home to them. Where is all this leading to? Well for a start in recent times we seem to favour 2-2 draws. In addition, the last four games against Palace have all had four goals in them. This is leading me towards believing that we are destined to draw 2-2 at Selhurst Park this weekend. Based on the early games of this season for both sides, then this would seem to be a good result for us, and certainly one that is not anticipated by the pundits. Nevertheless getting my optimistic hat out once again I am hoping for even more. Perhaps there will be four goals in the game, and we will win 3-1?