Category: Report

I find it interesting to read fans views which say that the current performance of the team is the worst ever, this manager is the worst ever, we have the worst board ever, and the stadium is the sole reason for our current position. Even fans who have been supporting the club for many years claim to hold some of these views. I beg to differ.

Despite our exit from the three cup competitions in which we took part, which is certainly not satisfactory, we still sit in 13^th place in the Premier League at the turn of the year, roughly midway through the season. On the other hand we are just one win away from being in the top half of the table, but seven points clear of the relegation places. In our last ten seasons in the top tier our position on January 1 each season was as follows:

2015-16 (8), 2014-15 (6), 2013-14 (19), 2012-13 (12), 2010-11 (19), 2009-10 (17), 2008-09 (10), 2007-08 (9), 2006-07 (18), 2005-06 (10). Average of the last 10 = 13^th!

So Slaven Bilic is the worst manager ever? There are some short memories I believe. Where shall I start? Who remembers Macari, Roeder, Grant, Allardyce, Pardew, Zola? Even John Lyall, who is revered by many, and who took us to our best ever league position when we finished third in 1985-86, took us down twice.

This is the worst board ever? Really? Yes they need to learn to keep their mouths shut at times. I’d love to play cards with them – I reckon they reveal their hand too easily. But who remembers Brown (the Bond scheme debacle), or the Icelandics (who almost bankrupted us)? Yes there were some poor signings in the summer, and they must take their share of the blame for that, but was it all their doing? How much say does the manager have?

Some write that the stadium is to blame; if only we could go back to Upton Park they say. Look back at the statistics. Was the Boleyn Ground really a fortress? No it wasn’t. The board and many others believe it was the only chance of trying to move to the next level. It hasn’t happened, yet, but it might. But there is no going back now. We can’t continue to harp on about it, and hide behind it for some poor performances. Yes, sure, there are a few tourists; that will happen, there will always be a handful, but we haven’t got 20,000 people sitting down eating popcorn, or asking who the players are. In my opinion such a lot is out of proportion to reality.

Another theory I’ve heard bandied about is the size of the pitch. Well the pitch at the London Stadium is 105 metres x 68 metres, exactly meeting the standard that the Premier League want all clubs to have. More than half of them do. If the stadium doesn’t allow it then a smaller pitch is permissible. Upton Park was one of those examples. The pitch there was 68 metres wide too, but was just over 4 metres shorter in length than the London Stadium. Does size matter? Do the extra two metres in each half of the field really make a difference? When we played so well against Chelsea, did we reduce the pitch size?

In reality I believe there are a number of reasons for a season that, to date, is just an average one in the history of our football club. The summer transfer dealings didn’t improve the team as many hoped they would. The board haven’t succeeded in attracting the right players for us to move upwards. The manager doesn’t appear to have a clear strategy with the players at his disposal. The players have not performed as they did last season for whatever reason. We have had, not for the first time, more than our fair share of injuries to key players. We are in transition stadium-wise. Many other clubs found it hard at first, but they adapted and became used to new surroundings.

But let’s get it all into perspective. It is not the worst season ever. It is certainly not the best either. It is just another average season in the history of West Ham United Football Club. Our average finishing league position in the last fifty years in the top flight is around 12^th to 13^th. We are on course for another average finish. Of course the fans want better. I’m sure the board, the manager, and the players want better. I want better. This is my 59^th season of supporting the club. But as so many people eventually find out, that well-worn phrase, be careful what you wish for.

It may be that the season gets worse from here. If so, changes will have to be made. If it gets better then we (or at least some of us) will be happy for the time being. But whichever direction it does head in, we may not be the best, and we may not be the worst. We are West Ham. Usually, somewhere in the middle of the top tier. But that’s what supporting the club is all about. Perhaps it is the sheer unpredictability that we love. We never know what to expect from one season to another, from one game to another, and even from the first half to the second half of a game. Some will disagree but that’s how I see it!

Click Here to Read Part One of this Article

In the aftermath of the massively disappointing defeat at the hands of Manchester City on Friday night, social media went into overdrive, possibly exceeding what has gone before this season. I guess that the match being shown live on terrestrial television had something to do with it. Virtually no credit was given to our opponents who played some breathtaking stuff at times, just as Arsenal did a few weeks ago. Quite frankly after the first 25 minutes we could not live with them. But then once again, a soft penalty was awarded to a top team. How often does this happen? They are better than us anyway, there is no need to give them an unfair advantage! Yes, to some extent we capitulated in the second half, but I don’t believe it was lack of effort. We just have to accept that we are not good enough to compete with the best.

Once, in a training exercise in the work environment, we were asked to come out with one thing that we really liked about social media, and something that we didn’t like. I liked the fact it enabled individuals to express an opinion which could be seen instantly by many people, sometimes thousands of them. For the dislike I toyed between the anonymity that social media provided, which meant that individuals often make derogatory or rude comments about others that they wouldn’t make to their face, or alternatively, the inability of people as a whole to accept that others have a point of view that may differ from their own. I guess the latter is a fact of modern life that seems to be shared by so many who believe that their opinion must be right, and any other views are not acceptable. I found that much of this was in evidence on social media in the immediate aftermath of the game, and has even continued in the couple of days that have elapsed since then.

In my view (and I accept there may be alternative views!) the top 6 teams are now getting further away from the rest of the Premier League than ever before. The three London clubs, Chelsea, Arsenal and Tottenham, in conjunction with the three north-western giants of the two Manchester clubs and Liverpool, have so much more money than the rest, despite the massive injection of TV cash that some thought might equalise the situation. Of course, many who disagree with this will point to last season when the “Big 6” didn’t occupy the top six places, and the title was in fact won by a rank outsider, Leicester. For me this was a complete one-off freak season that I cannot see being repeated.  And when you think about it, despite their indifferent seasons, all of the Big 6 finished in the top 10, despite the interlopers like Leicester, West Ham, Southampton and Stoke.

The Big 6 are showing an even greater domination of the Premier League this season, and I don’t think many would disagree that they will finish way ahead of the chasing pack. These are the same top six clubs that occupied the first six places in 2014-15. The season before, 2013-14, these six finished in the top 7, the other team to join the party were Everton. In 2012-13 we had the same situation, that is 6 out of 7 plus Everton. When we were relegated in 2010-11 it was the same top 6 plus Everton were seventh. In 2009-10 the Big 6 finished in the first seven, this time Villa crept in to the group and Everton were 8^th. Can you see the pattern here? The top six are consistently much too good for the others over the course of a season, although there are some short-term minor blips. Everton are the next team down in the pecking order.

After last season, the expectation of fans for this season went through the roof, and partly this may have been fuelled by the board, insisting that to compete with the very top clubs we needed to move into a bigger stadium, enabling us to significantly increase our income. This is probably true to some extent, although many will point to Leicester, whose ground capacity and revenue falls well short of our own when we were still at Upton Park, and despite this they still managed to come out on top.

For more than 20 years the accountancy firm Deloitte has produced revenue statistics of football clubs. It is released in February each year relating to the season most recently finished. Generally you can measure the league success of teams by their income, and in broad terms the income league table is not too dissimilar to the current Premier League table. The top six clubs mentioned previously are the top six in the income league table too, albeit in a slightly different order. In income terms we sit in tenth place which is close to our league position, too. The same is true of most clubs in the Premier League. The problem for lower teams is that the gap is getting wider, hence the reason to move to a larger stadium where possible, just to try to halt the growth in the income gap.

To be continued …..

The game began and what a bright start we made. As I had thought, the absence of Noble and Carroll meant that we would be moving the ball at pace, without too much reliance on long balls to our big striker, and trying to pick up knock downs. Now I am a fan of Carroll, but sometimes believe that when he is in the team we don’t vary our playing patterns sufficiently to pose a threat to the opposition.

Lanzini, Payet, Feghouli, and others were linking well with some incisive one touch passing at speed, and I really felt that this was going to be some game. And then came the moment after about a quarter of an hour which has been the subject of much debate since. Anyone reading this will know what happened, and probably around 99% of everyone I’ve read or heard agrees that the referee, Mike Dean, blundered badly, and in effect ruined the match from that point on. I don’t think I’ve ever heard such a collective gasp in a stadium when he produced the red card.

The team were galvanised and played with great organisation, but it was always going to be a big ask to hold a team of the quality of Manchester United for 75 minutes. Reid and Ogbonna were splendid at the back, the magnificent Obiang had an imperious game in midfield (why do so many people overlook his great qualities and importance to the team?). Lanzini was having an excellent game too, and the rest of the team were playing their part.

We had one let off in the first half when our old friend Post came to the rescue (as he did three times in the Hull game), after Randolph had made a terrific strong arm save to keep the ball out at point blank range. Goal line technology proved just how close it was to crossing the line when I watched the game back on TV after returning home. It would have been a travesty if a goal had been scored, because from my position directly in line, Lingard (I think) seemed well offside when he hit the post, and I couldn’t understand why the linesman hadn’t raised his flag.

The introduction of Rashford and Mata in the second half gave the men from Manchester greater impetus, and as we tired, it was no great surprise when we eventually conceded a goal. Shortly before we fell behind, Lanzini put a great ball through to Antonio, but one on one with De Gea he managed to hit his legs. Mourinho described it as a great save after the game, but I felt it just hit him. Antonio had failed to connect with a header earlier, so we did have chances to score the first goal of the game. Had one of them gone in then it might have been a different story.

Post came to the rescue a second time when a shot slid under Randolph’s grasp, but their second goal killed the game off. From my position at the other end Ibrahimovic looked as if he might have been offside, and this was later confirmed when I saw the replay.

All in all the players can be proud of their performances, something which cannot be said of the match officials. Dean ruined a game of football for 55,000 people with his blunder, and for any watching on TV. There is no excuse for the linesman who blundered badly, too. Quite frankly they were inept throughout the match, and had no feel for what was happening. We always hope for consistency from referees and no two games can be compared exactly, but anyone who saw Ross Barkley’s horror tackle on Jordan Henderson recently, which Dean only thought worthy of a yellow card, can only shake their head in bewilderment in his treatment of Feghouli. Barkley’s potential leg-breaker provoked an explosive melee in the Liverpool v Everton game, whereas in our game, some United players were consoling Feghouli about the unjustness of his sending off.

Of course Jones played his part in the dismissal, arching his back and rolling over and over, but a minute later he was running around without the slightest limp. Some United players ran to the referee when the two players collided, but they always do that, don’t they?

Quite frankly the whole match was ruined by one person who thinks he is part of the entertainment. He is not. Scathing attacks on his performance have come from all quarters after the game. Garth Crooks on BBC, Alan Smith and Niall Quinn on Sky post-match, and other ex-referees such as Poll, Halsey and Webb all agreed it was a ruinous decision for the game. One that I found especially interesting was from Keith Hackett, who famously sent off Tony Gale in the FA Cup semi-final 25 years or so ago. Hackett, in his piece, admitted his major error in sending off Gale, and remarked that Dean should have thought longer over his decision.

My next letter of complaint is to Mike Riley, the referees supremo. I was disgusted by the ruination of my evening entertainment, and I will demand to know what he is going to do about the poor state of officialdom which falls under his control. Too many games are being spoiled by inept officials.

And it is about time that video replays were introduced to try to eradicate some of these gross errors. But that is for another article …

[Click Here for Part One of this Article]

Monday 2^nd January wasn’t my favourite day of the year so far. The day began OK and we spent the morning taking down the Christmas tree and decorations, moving the tree to the garden to be chopped up and re-cycled at a later date, and depositing the boxes of various decorations into the loft for another year. A leisurely lunch and then we set off for the London Stadium at around 2.30pm.

We live in Bury St Edmunds so it is quite a trip when we go to watch West Ham, but not as far as some fans travel. Listening to the radio on the A11 I realised that the kick off was at 5.15, not 5.30 that I had in mind, but still leaving us sufficient time to get there on time. As we reached the junction with the M11 there was a long tail-back of traffic, and we crawled for most of the journey to Epping, which is where we normally catch the Central Line train for Stratford.

Unfortunately the car park at Epping, the largest car park on the whole London Underground network, was full, as were all the nearby streets within walking distance of the station. Never mind, we drove on two further stops down the line to Debden and parked there. We got to Stratford around 40 minutes before kick-off and set off on the long winding route march to the ground. As West Ham fans have found, although a direct walk from Stratford station to the London Stadium shouldn’t really take that long, it is not possible to take the most obvious route, and we are directed on a journey that takes twice as long in dark streets with minimal lighting. You can see the stadium but don’t seem to be getting much nearer following the prescribed course.

When we reached the stadium the crowds outside and queues to get in were much bigger than usual. I soon found out the reason why. The security checks and bag searches were more extensive than usual. When my bag was searched, security found that, in addition to gloves, hats, the programme, a few snacks etc. we were trying to enter the ground with two dangerous articles, namely two plastic bottles of Pepsi Max. Now I don’t have a problem with security searches normally, but this time it was as if we were going through Stansted airport. I was surprised that they didn’t ask us to remove our belts and shoes!

I was not impressed with the manner of the way we were treated by the security guy, who was insistent that we deposit the offensive Pepsi Max plastic bottles in a bin before entering the ground. I asked to speak to his boss and was directed to another security guy. I explained that the drinks were for our journey home. With the game ending after 7pm, and the difficulty in entering the Westfield Centre after the match to buy a drink for our return trip, I demanded to know why we were not allowed to keep our drinks.

I was informed that no dangerous weapons are permitted in the ground! Now I am a long- time supporter in my sixties, and have been watching the team regularly since 1958, and have never before been stopped from entering the ground with plastic bottles of drink. I stood my ground and insisted that Pepsi Max was not a dangerous weapon. What did they think I was going to do with it? Apparently it is considered to be a danger to fans if I threw it! I explained I had no intention of using it as a missile. I wanted a drink on the way home. Now I sit about as far away from the opposition fans as is possible in the London Stadium, and not even Steve Backley could throw a javelin that distance, let alone a soft drinks plastic bottle. Surely coins are a much more dangerous missile; what next, will we be asked to remove all coins from our pocket before entering the stadium?

The chief security guy finally agreed that we could take the plastic bottles into the ground if we removed the caps! Kick-off time was approaching and I wasn’t prepared to discuss the matter any further, so we took of the caps and entered through the turnstiles with our full bottles of Pepsi-Max without the tops. I did ask the security guy for the name of the authority that imposed the rules, and he informed me that it wasn’t actually a stadium requirement as such (plastic bottles of drink are sold within the ground), but a strict directive from Gold and Sullivan, and I should direct my complaint to them.

When I reached my seat as Bubbles began, I was relating the story to the grandfather who sits next to me with his six year old grandson. He had the same experience and his grandson’s fruit shoot also had to have the cap removed before they entered the ground. Very frustrated by my experience I sat down to watch the game. I looked at the teams and was pleased to see that the manager had selected a side which was likely to have more pace than usual. I was looking forward to the game. I really felt that it was going to be a good one. I will write a letter of complaint to Messrs. Gold and Sullivan tomorrow to see what they have to say.

(To be continued …..)

The last time we played Swansea was when they visited us in the final Saturday home game last season at Upton Park in May when they inflicted on us our heaviest home defeat of the season, beating us 4-1. It was fitting to return the compliment and beat them by the identical score on Boxing Day.

When Andy Carroll blasted the fourth goal into the Swansea net in injury time it got me thinking. When was the last time we scored four goals away from home in a Premier League match? The last time I can actually remember was once again on Boxing Day in 2008 when we visited the south coast and put four goals without reply past Portsmouth. And where are they now? Craig Bellamy scored twice with a goal apiece from Carlton Cole and Jack Collison. We may have scored four goals on our travels since then; it certainly happened three or four times in the Championship, and also at least once in the FA Cup, but not in the top flight unless there is a game that has slipped my mind. And it would be very unusual to forget scoring four goals away from home as it doesn’t happen very often.

Of course along with all our fans I was delighted that we picked up the three points. It is always good to win games without being totally convincing. That’s ten points now from four games, a haul that I don’t think we bettered in four consecutive league games in the last memorable season at Upton Park. We now have the opportunity to go one better and make it four wins on the bounce with the forthcoming trip to Leicester.

The manager thought that it was our best performance of the season and he may be right. But we shouldn’t be kidding ourselves into thinking that everything is now OK. We are not yet playing at the level we achieved last season and, of course, many theories have been put forward as to why that is. I believe that injuries and confidence are two important factors, as is fear when you are involved in a relegation tussle. As we distance ourselves further from the bottom three, I hope that the fear factor will diminish, and hopefully disappear altogether.

We are not yet out of the woods, but I can see us pushing on now into the top half of the table. These days many people appear to believe that most things in life are either black or white. This is exacerbated within the media and social media. When we are not winning then the team is (fill in the missing word or words), and a range of expletives are directed towards the players, the team, the manager, and the board. When we turn it around and start to win games the expletives disappear, and all of a sudden the world is a wonderful place and we’ll soon be challenging for a top four spot. The reality of life is that most things are not black or white, but one of 50 shades of grey in between. We weren’t the worst team in the Premier League earlier in the season, and now we are not the best.

We fall somewhere in the middle of the pack, and we need to improve if we really want to be challenging at the top. Of course, to coin a popular phrase, there are lots of positives to come from our recent revival in terms of results, but still a way to go to be totally convincing in performance. But we are all a lot happier than we were early in December when we sat in the bottom three. So well done to all involved for where we are now, but it’s not “job done” yet by a long way.

One way we have improved over last season is in our ability to beat teams in the bottom half of the league. Of course we finished in the top half last season, but one of the (justified) criticisms levelled was our inability to pick up as many points as perhaps we should have done against the lesser teams. In 2015-16 we managed an average of 3.33 points in our two games against each of the teams who finished in the top ten, but could only get an average of 3.2 points against the bottom ten teams. This season at the moment we sit in a relatively comfortable eleventh place, and our six victories have all come against teams who are below us. Only two of our twenty-two points have come against teams above us, the away draws at Old Trafford and Anfield.

Because of the way that the fixture list has worked out, seven of the ten teams above us will be visiting the London Stadium in the second half of the season. Hopefully we can balance out our results and pick up more points against the top teams, just as we did last season. The loss of players to the African Nations Cup will hit us harder than many others, and it remains to be seen if any significant transfer activity will be able to strengthen the team. Nonetheless, the results are looking good at the moment. Long may it continue.

A couple of days ago Geoff Hopkins wrote an excellent article with five observations in respect of robbing Hull of three points at the weekend. It is hard to disagree with anything that he said. During the game tweeted that he believed the post was our man of the match, and his idea was followed up on some post-match polls with thousands of respondents who agreed with his selection.

Whenever a player is known by one name you know he is a star. Pele, Maradonna, and now Post. Post, whose real name is Woody Woodwork, is related to a number of famous people such as Rod Laver, Rod Marsh, Postman Pat, Woody (of Toy Story fame) and Roy Wood, whose Christmas song is played throughout December. He is also closely related to Barry Bar of Crossbar Challenge fame.

Reports that Post was seen staggering out of an East End nightclub at 4am on Sunday morning were way off the mark according to his agent, Posty McPost Face. Posty confirmed that Post is an upright character who spent the evening at home with his wife, Wendy Woodwork, after a meal at a Chigwell restaurant with close friends.

Post has always been known as a hard man at the back, and his agent has lined him up with several lucrative endorsement opportunities, the biggest one being the front for a new Viagra campaign. Sales of West Ham home shirts with “POST” on the back have been the biggest seller in the club shop in the lead up to Christmas.

Despite Post coming to our rescue three times, and the general agreement that Hull deserved to win the game, or most certainly didn’t deserve to lose, it is interesting to note some of the statistics for the game. Now as Geoff and I have written on some occasions in the past, football statistics can be interesting but in many respects are meaningless when considering the outcome of a game.

Nevertheless I will set out below some of the key statistics that are always collected at games. Those people who believe in the statistics will find it hard to believe that Hull were unlucky losers.

Possession – West Ham 56%, Hull 44%
Shots – West Ham 19, Hull 16
Shots on Target – West Ham 6, Hull 5
Corners – West Ham 10, Hull 6

None of this really means anything except that we had the ball more than they did, we shot at goal more than they did, we had more shots on target than they did, and forced more corners than they did. I know that the general view is that we were fortunate (very fortunate!), but the fact of the matter is we scored a goal and they didn’t. And when it comes down to allocation of points that means we got three and they got zero.

Of course if we keep playing like this, then as Geoff pointed out, we are unlikely to win many more games. But, just for the moment I will take our seven points from three distinctly average performances in the past week. Things will need to improve drastically, but I can remember many occasions in our history when we have deserved to win games but haven’t. It’s good for the boot to be on the other foot for a change.

Sometimes in life you have to blow your own trumpet. Well I haven’t actually got a trumpet but you know what I mean. Since the beginning of this season Geoff and I have been writing this weblog and haven’t pulled any punches when writing about our beloved West Ham. But despite our less than convincing start to the season, I have remained optimistic throughout and my optimism was fully justified after our draw at Anfield.

Anybody who has followed our blog will know that there are certain features that are constant. Firstly, we are involved in a prediction competition with Lawro. Secondly, I write a betting column each week. And thirdly, we write a preview of each game that West Ham play.

First things first. If you have read our prediction competition involving Lawro you will know that I am comfortably ahead in our forecasts for the season to date. This, despite the fact that Lawro is actually paid by the BBC to predict the Premier league results each week, probably because they believe he is a so-called expert. If you have followed his predictions you will know that sometimes he has been beaten by celebrities, some of whom confess they know little about the game. Amongst my predictions this week you will also note that I forecast a 2-2 draw at Anfield.

If you follow my betting column you will know that, after this week, I am comfortably in profit for the season to date, even despite some outrageous fun bets. If it hadn’t been for the last two minutes against Tottenham, which I didn’t foresee, then our season profit would have been huge. Nevertheless I was consistent, and believed that we would get at least a draw from our game at Anfield, and a 2-2 scoreline was a good result for the column.

Finally, if you read my preview for this week’s game you will note that I made comments like “What is there to worry about? We faced Liverpool four times last season. We won both league games, drew 0-0 there in the fourth round of the FA Cup, and beat them after extra time in the replay at Upton Park. That is 390 minutes of football, plus injury time, and we scored seven goals to their one. And we finished above them in the league. So why do the bookies make them 3/10 favourites, and offer odds of 9/1 on us winning the game?” I finished by saying “I’ll put my optimistic hat on and say we’ll get a 2-2 draw on Sunday.”

Now forecasting the results of football matches is a bit of a minefield. It’s even harder to predict what West Ham are going to do. You win some and you lose some. Sometimes you win, hence the reason for blowing my own trumpet after this game.

As far as the game goes, then I was extremely disappointed that we conceded a goal in the first five minutes once again. Anybody who read my book, Goodbye Upton Park, Hello Stratford, which is available in paperback or Kindle on Amazon, will note that constantly throughout that last famous season at Upton Park, I wrote about our inability to start a game, or indeed to start a second half of a game, on the front foot. And so it proved again, when we even exceeded our first half lapse at the beginning of the second half, by conceding a goal in just two minutes.

Randolph’s lapse was unfortunate and led to calls on social media for Adrian to return to our goal. It is not a belief I share, and I was pleased he had the opportunity for some redemption with a world class save to deny Henderson later in the game.

I note that I also wrote in the preview of this game that “Bournemouth showed us last Sunday that the Liverpool defence can be got at, and their keeper looked very vulnerable.” Payet once again showed his class by scoring from yet another free kick, although I reckon the Liverpool keeper would have been disappointed that his right arm wasn’t stronger, as he should perhaps have kept it out. And Antonio took his goal well, pouncing on a Liverpool defensive lapse, and just for once scoring with his feet and not his head. I liked his post-match interview where he jokingly said that he considered getting down to nod the ball into the goal.

I also noted that the statisticians came up with a new one that I hadn’t seen before “touches in the opposition penalty area”. It showed that Liverpool won this contest 53-5. But whilst it may be an interesting feature for some, the game proved that it really is a meaningless statistic unless you turn those touches into goals.

I’m sure that Mr. Nordveidt, like Messrs. Zaza and Tore amongst others, must have shown some footballing qualities that made us want to buy them in the first place, but to date I haven’t yet seen what they are. I reckon that, despite Mr. Bilic’s admirable qualities as a football manager, which undoubtedly far exceed my own judgement of footballers, I have a better idea as to what makes a decent right back. He persisted with Antonio in this position for far longer than I believe he should have, and his selection of Nordveidt in the full back role leaves me totally bewildered. His positioning is so far out, and Liverpool spotted this in their pre-match planning. It was no surprise to me that their two goals came from attacks down their left flank.

It was good to hear the West Ham away support throughout the game, and in particular their support for the manager, when he has come under so much pressure. Despite his inability to know a right back when he sees one, I hope that he continues to get the support to get us out of the trouble that we are undoubtedly still in. We have just pulled out of the bottom three, and I hope that it is the last time I see a league table this season where we are in it.

When all is considered it was a point well earned, and the players showed a lot of spirit to earn the draw. Let us hope that we now build on that in the relative easier (on paper) four games to come. I’ll keep my optimistic hat on and hope that I get more opportunities to blow my own trumpet in the weeks to come!

Take the current shortcomings of West Ham, and add the brilliance of Arsenal, and you have the recipe for a heavy defeat.  And that is exactly what we got. The speed and touch of Arsenal as they attacked gave us a lesson in how to play the game. Sanchez in particular was awesome. He produced one of the best individual performances that I have seen for a long time, and Arsenal were undoubtedly one of the best teams that we are likely to face this season. Having said that, I watched Bournemouth play Liverpool on Sunday afternoon, and both teams would have inflicted a heavy defeat on us if they replicated that kind of attacking football.

I’m afraid that for much of the game our attacking ideas were based upon slow, ponderous passing, and although I suspect the possession statistics for the game would have showed that we had as much of the ball as they did, we were just not in the same league when it came to creating opportunities to score goals.

So where are we going wrong? Well, where do I start? Perhaps it is worth looking to see if any of our players did themselves justice on the day? For a start, Randolph, despite conceding five goals, was not to blame for any of them in my opinion, and even saved us from getting even more of a hiding. I thought that Reid had a decent game and showed great commitment, and Masuaku, for all his critics, isn’t too bad for a squad left back. Arbeloa was understandably rusty, and I thought at first that the enforced substitution to take Collins place would benefit us.

I just could not understand why Bilic started with the three at the back formation when our two best wing-backs, Cresswell and Antonio, were ruled out of the game. Surely he had to see that we needed to play with two full backs when facing the attacking threat of the Gunners. I could not work out when Arbeloa came on if we had indeed changed the formation. If we had, then somebody should have told Fernandes, because for the whole game Arbeloa and Fernandes played as if they had never met each other before. Perhaps they hadn’t? Neither seemed to know exactly what they should be doing. And with the pacy threat of Monreal down the Arsenal left, this was a big mistake.

Bilic’s nonsensical revelations after the game, that the players weren’t working well in training, was another indicator that the preparation for the match was poor. And who is to blame for that? Well, the players to an extent yes, but surely the manager and coaching staff have the responsibility to ensure that the team are fully prepared for the opposition that they will be facing. Haven’t they seen how Arsenal play? It didn’t come as a surprise to me, and shouldn’t have been a surprise to them either.

Payet showed one or two touches of skill, but nothing like what we saw last season, and he continues to look disinterested for much of the game. Perhaps he really doesn’t want to be here? It’s not his role, but in any defensive sense he is a liability, and whilst we can perhaps accept one luxury player in the team, others have to cover for this.

Mark Noble is coming in for massive criticism and just looks totally out of sorts. He really seems to be running in treacle throughout the game, and whilst he has never been the fastest, he has somehow got away with it in the past. But at the moment he has probably never looked so poor in his whole career, and is another liability with his tendency to dwell on the ball, pass sideways and backwards, and generally slow down our whole momentum.

Lanzini looked lively enough and showed some neat touches, and Obiang played well again in the middle, but from what I have seen so far, it seems incredible that we paid £20 million for Ayew. I guess he hasn’t played much so far, and is playing in a struggling team lacking in confidence, but he has done nothing to suggest to me that we have a good buy there. Fletcher will, I believe, be a good player for us in the future, but despite some good movement and control, was so far isolated to have any real effect.

Carroll looked lively when he came on. I hope he didn’t pick up an injury in his twenty minute cameo. He took the goal well, but another tactical error in my opinion was not playing him from the start, especially considering the opposition on the day. It is well documented how he scared the living daylights out of Arsenal last season, and even though Bilic felt he would not (understandably) last ninety minutes, surely to play him from the beginning of the game would have unsettled the opposition more, and at least put us on the front foot from the outset. But no, it seems we wanted to hand the initial momentum to our opponents, who took full advantage.

So where do we go from here? Bilic looked beleaguered in his post-match interview, and didn’t say anything to instil confidence in his ability to lift the team. We really are in a fight now, and the next five games to take us up to the middle of the season are crucial. Bournemouth showed us how Liverpool can be vulnerable at the back, but I’m not convinced that we have the weapons to attack them at Anfield, and get anything out of the game. Swansea and Sunderland are playing each other next weekend and Hull are at home to Palace. We could well be in the bottom three by the time we face Liverpool on Sunday afternoon.

We then have four easier games (on paper), but anything less than at least eight points from those (and it’s hard to see us achieving this on current form), then I suspect the board will be contemplating a managerial change by the end of 2016. That is if they are not already in the process of doing so.