Under The Hammers

Matchday: West Ham ‘entertain’ Manchester United

The other United take their bus to the London Stadium for today’s late kickoff.

West Ham Man Utd The visitors to the London Stadium today are Manchester United who, in terms of revenue, continue to be the biggest club in the Premier League. Given the strong correlation between money and success the Manchester club have underperformed since the retirement of Sir Alex Ferguson and this season, under third post-Fergie manager, Jose Mourinho, are once again off the pace from the leading pack. Coming into today’s game on a run of 5 straight wins they remain 13 points behind leaders Chelsea and 7 behind second place Liverpool.

Mourinho has brought his 19^th century tactics and introduced the traditional siege mentality to the Old Trafford club and we will need a strong performance from referee Mike ‘Penalty King’ Dean this afternoon.

“We played a good game. I’m very disappointed, angry, frustrated we lost. They started better, we knew they were going to start aggressively and for the first 20 minutes they deserved the goal. I’m very disappointed but we played a good game and that makes one part of me satisfied. We look good but that final product wasn’t there.”

– Slaven Bilic on defeat at Leicester

West Ham’s mini-revival was brought to an abrupt halt in the East Midlands on New Year’s Eve and it will require one of those ‘obscene’ performances to repeat last year’s rousing victory in the final Boleyn encounter.

Head to Head

West Ham’s home record against Manchester United is a reasonably healthy one although last year’s success was the first in the league since 2007. It was also the only victory against the Red Devils in the last 12 meetings home and away.

	P	W	D	L	F	A	Sequence
Home	62	26	21	15	103	90	WLDLDD
Away	65	13	11	41	60	148	LDDDLL
	127	39	32	56	163	238

Team News

There are no new escapees from the treatment room and Mark Noble has become a new inmate after getting a whack on the knee in the Leicester game. It has become very difficult to anticipate Slaven Bilic’s selection decisions and, for all I know, he may be plotting something revolutionary like playing rush-goalie. The logical changes, for me, to the team that lost on Saturday would be to recall Pedro Obiang to centre midfield and start with Manuel Lanzini instead of Andre Ayew. I am much happier with a back 4 and the added protection that Obiang provides provided that Angelo Ogbonna stays awake for the whole game. Also time for Dimitri Payet to step up and put in a performance to impress the visiting manager.

“It’s a challenge for everybody but Chelsea, as they play only on the 4th, Tottenham played Sunday and then on the 4th. For us and West Ham it’s the same – difficult. Middlesbrough play at 12 o’clock, so less than 48 hours. It’s very hard, especially when you see the intensity of this game.”

– Jose Mourinho on everything being so unfair.

Manchester United are without their best defender Eric Bailly who has already left for the Africa Cup of Nations and may be without Michael Carrick and Wayne Rooney. Fingers crossed that Rooney is not involved and is thus unable to break Sir Bobby Charlton’s goal-scoring record on our manor. Mourinho’s side are more a bunch of individuals than a cohesive team but they do have some exceptional talent; we will do well to get anything from today’s game.

The Man in the Middle

Welcome for the second time this season Mike Dean from The Wirral (just down the road from Manchester). He previously officiated in our match at White Hart Lane where he sent off Winston Reid. Reid is the season’s top penalty giver with 10 awarded to date. In his 16 games he has flourished 72 Yellow and 4 Red cards.

I Wouldn’t Bet On It 25

Keeping it simple as we look for value in today’s big game with the reds of Manchester.

Fancy A Bet

No luck with the bets for the game at Leicester, so with a balance of 130 points we move on to the Manchester United game. I like the odds on Betfair for this game, so despite United’s good run of late, I fancy us to repeat our victory over them in the last game at Upton Park. Of course we have already played them twice this season at Old Trafford, drawing in the league, but we were on the end of a bit of a hiding in the EFL Cup. Rooney always seems to score against us but I don’t think he has travelled for this game. So keeping it simple, the bets for today, which I’ve found on Betfair:

9 points on West Ham to beat Man Utd @5/1 (50)
5 points on the game ending in a draw @16/5 (21)
1 point on a repeat score from May i.e. a 3-2 win for West Ham @59/1 (60)

Total stake 15 points, reducing our balance to 115 points.

Potential returns if correct in brackets.

What are the chances?

Preview: West Ham v Manchester United

Previewing the Manchester United game plus a look back at the 1-0 defeat at Leicester.

Reid v Man Utd The second half of our 2016-17 Premier League campaign begins with the visit of Manchester United. Nobody who was there will ever forget their last visit on that warm May evening eight months ago, when we came from behind to record that famous 3-2 victory in our final game at Upton Park. We will be hoping to achieve a similar points haul against United to that attained last season, when we drew at Old Trafford before beating them at home.

When you consider that they are the most successful club in the history of English football, with 20 league titles and 11 FA Cups, we have a good record against them in competitive matches on our own ground. In over 60 meetings we have won 26 to their 15, although in the 21^st century we have only beaten them three times in the league at Upton Park. In addition to last season’s win, we beat them in two consecutive seasons; 2006-07, when a Reo-Coker goal was the only goal of the game, and the following year when Anton Ferdinand and Upson were our scorers in a 2-1 victory. In that game we were trailing to an early Ronaldo goal when United were awarded a penalty midway through the second half. However Ronaldo pulled the penalty kick wide of the post, and our two central defenders each scored with late headers in a memorable finale to the game. Of course it was a similar tale last season when two late headers won the game for us.

Embed from Getty Images

United go into this game in sixth place in the table, although I guess their fans would have expected them to be closer to the top and challenging for the title, especially with the appointment of Mourinho this season. They have had a good run of results recently, and remain unbeaten since a heavy defeat at Stamford Bridge in October. This included a 1-1 draw against us, when Sakho’s early goal was cancelled out by Ibrahimovic. Mkhitaryan scored a spectacular goal for them in a recent victory over Sunderland, although this was well offside. I fail to understand how a trained assistant referee failed to spot this, or was it just another of those occasions when a “big club” get fortunate with decisions in their favour, especially when playing at home?

Our 1-0 defeat at Leicester on Saturday meant that we reached the mid-point of the season with 22 points from our nineteen games, which is 7 fewer than last time, but more than we might have expected just one month ago. We rose a place to twelfth position thanks to Tottenham beating Watford 4-1 on Sunday, meaning that our goal difference is now better than that of the Hornets. Mark Noble picked up an injury at Leicester and I believe is likely to be missing for this game. This might be a blessing in disguise for us enabling Pedro Obiang to return in the defensive midfield role.

Geoff reviewed the game at Leicester admirably. I have only seen highlights but from what I saw we were unlucky to not get a point, but we seemed to start slowly once again. We must really get out of this bad habit of starting lethargically, and be up for a fast start to the game, especially against United. We need to be at them from the start in a similar way to how they started against us in the EFL cup game. The bookies don’t fancy us at all and I’ve seen odds of up to 5/1 for us to win the game. I’ll have some of that and will be looking for a win by the odd goal, perhaps 2-1 or 3-2. What are the chances?

The Lawro Challenge – Week 20

The bid to out predictor the BBC prediction guru enters the second half of the season.

Xmas Lawro Nineteen rounds of games in the Premier League have now been completed. That means we have now predicted the results of 190 matches. We have now reached the halfway stage in the Premier League season.

Normal service was resumed In Week 19 where Rich scored a commendable 10 points, Geoff an underwhelming 4 points, and Lawro also weighed in with 10 points of his own . In this challenge we award one point for a correct result, and a further two points (making three in total) if the score prediction is spot on.

We now move on to week 20 and the return set of fixtures between clubs.

	Rich	Geoff	Lawro
Total after 18 weeks	152	116	143
Score in week 19	10	4	10
Total after 19 weeks	162	120	153

Predictions – Week 20
	Rich	Geoff	Lawro
Monday
Middlesbrough v Leicester	1-0	1-1	0-2
Everton v Southampton	2-1	2-0	2-0
Man City v Burnley	3-0	3-1	3-0
Sunderland v Liverpool	0-3	1-3	0-2
WBA v Hull	2-0	3-0	2-0
West Ham v Man Utd	2-1	2-2	1-2
Tuesday
Bournemouth v Arsenal	2-2	1-2	0-2
Palace v Swansea	2-0	1-0	2-0
Stoke v Watford	3-1	3-0	2-0
Wednesday
Tottenham v Chelsea	2-2	1-1	2-1

5 Observations From Defeat at Leicester

Both the year and West Ham’s latest winning streak are brought to a halt in an entertaining defeat at Leicester.

A Good Game for the Neutral

All in all an entertaining game with plenty to satisfy the neutral spectator if any were inclined to watch this game featuring two of the worst defences in the Premier League this season. For those with a more emotional investment in the outcome Leicester supporters will have been satisfied with three points and a clean sheet; West Ham fans will be disappointed at the absence of any return for territorial dominance and seeing our winning streak monitor reset to zero. Despite the entertainment the standard of football could easily have passed for a division or two lower; the game plagued by mistakes, little real quality and littered with examples of agricultural tackling that wouldn’t have been out of place on Hackney Marshes.

Magic Moment

The one real moment of quality was the Leicester goal. The hosts had started with the wind in their sails and there were a number of near misses before Slimani struck with the only goal of the game. The goal was quick, clinical and effective; an excellent cross from the right by Albrighton and great movement by Slimani to lose his markers and head home. The postmortem suggested a lack of tracking back by Dimitri Payet was partly to blame but should we really be expecting our main creative force to be doing that? It is the unfortunate consequence of stationing him wide on the left that it will always leave Cresswell with little cover. The argument is that playing Payet wide allows him to cut in and provide the angles where he can weave his magic; I question whether that trade off is necessarily profitable? After the goal the concern was that many more could follow but taking the lead seemed to panic Leicester and the Hammers were able to get back into the game. Our own best moment was the move where Payet fed Cresswell whose cross was thumped onto the crossbar by Michail Antonio with the ball rebounding to safety.

Never Mind the Quality Where’s the Width?

During the summer transfer window one could be forgiven for assuming that top of Slaven’s shopping list was “Must Buy Some Wingers” as Feghouli, Tore and Ayew all signed on to compete for a vacant wide berth with Antonio. The cunning plan was that send in enough quality crosses and Big Andy would be nodding them in for fun. Strange then that, yet again, we failed to provide any real width yesterday, rarely got behind the Leicester defence and managed to put only one on Andy’s head in a threatening position during the whole game (at least that’s my memory of events). With Payet on one flank and mainly cutting in, Antonio unable to get the better of Chilwell and Feghouli also reluctant to go down the line little service was provided to the big man. According to the stats West Ham had 25 shots (5 on target) but most of these were free kicks and speculative long shots. Bilic said “We were just missing that final touch” but in reality we created next to nothing despite having the lion’s share of possession. I never had the opportunity to watch Andre Ayew at Swansea so was unsure what type of player to expect; having now watched him in several games I am still bemused by his attributes other than getting in the way, falling over and trying to play first time passes of any part of his body as often as possible.

Playing to our Weaknesses

When I saw the lineups I was staggered that Pedro Obiang was on the bench and even more baffled that he didn’t get on at any time during the match. He has been our best player by far this season and I do not go along with the ‘it was good management’ mantra that Bilic was right to start with the same team that played at Swansea simply because we had secured an unconvincing victory against a very poor side in that game. The Noble – Kouyate partnership has rarely impressed and playing Kouyate in the holding role (that Obiang has been performing so brilliantly) inhibits the surging runs that Cheikhou can offer in midfield. For a team that is so poor at passing it is puzzling that our game-plan is predicated on a slow, patient build-up with its ponderous sideways and backwards momentum. The introduction of Lanzini did inject some pace but attacks continued to flounder due to a lack of ideas. The West Ham get out of jail card is often the set piece but although there were plenty of opportunities during the course of the game delivery was poor with Cresswell’s deflected free-kick (yes, he was allowed to take one) the nearest we came to scoring.

The Twelfth Man

It is said that a passionate crowd can be the twelfth man for a team and that this was one of Leicester’s secret weapons in last year’s successful championship winning season. The King Power crowd is a mix of seasoned supporters supplemented with clapper (the modern day football rattle?) wielding newbies. Together they generate a lot of noise and are collectively convinced that every refereeing decision should go in their favour. Now maybe I can be accused of watching games through claret and blue spectacles but I thought Anthony Taylor did a decent job overall even if he was rather little lenient in not showing straight red cards to Amartey of Leicester and Nordtveit for over enthusiastic tackling and later for not issuing a second yellow to Ogbonna. The most laughable moment with the crowd was their booing of Mark Noble for getting injured as a result of Amartey’s reckless studs high assault on his knee. Fingers crossed that Noble’s injury is not too serious at a time that others are away at the Africa Cup of Nations.

Ratings: Randolph (7), Nordtveit (5), Reid (6), Ogbonna (5), Cresswell (7), Antonio (5), Kouyate (4), Noble (4), Payet (5), Ayew (3), Carroll (6). Subs: Lanzini (7), Feghouli (5), Fernandes (5)

I Wouldn’t Bet On It 24

A healthy half year return beckons from our winning weekly wagers. Now we plan for an equally prosperous new year.

Fancy A Bet

It was obvious wasn’t it? So obvious that I thought that it wouldn’t happen. But it did. Ayew scored the first goal in the game at Swansea. His first goal for us was against his old club. But we had success yet again with the following bet last weekend:

8 points on West Ham to beat Swansea @7/4 (22)

Our balance stood at 125 points, and with this win has risen to the maximum snooker break of 147 points.

This time we’ll stick to a similar formula that has been successful in recent weeks, although our good run must come to an end soon. Or will it?

8 points on West Ham to beat Leicester @11/4 (30)
6 points on the game to end in a score draw @10/3 (26)
1 point on a correct score forecast of 2-2 @12/1 (13)
1 point on Cresswell to score the first goal and West Ham to win 2-1 @200/1 (201)
1 point on West Ham to win and Cresswell to score anytime @30/1 (31)

Total stake 17 points, reducing our balance to 130 points. Potential returns if correct in brackets.

It is about time that Aaron Cresswell scored. What are the chances?

Matchday: West Ham @ The King Power Stadium

The last day of the year and halfway through the season. Can it be four wins on the bounce, a scramble into the top half of the table and can Michail Antonio claim the ‘golden bonce’?

Leicester West Ham If history has taught us anything it is to select the bits of it that we like the look of and disregard the rest. Today West Ham travel to Leicester to face a side who we have traditionally done well against, with some particular success in games played during the Christmas and New Year period. Victory would make it 4 Premier League wins on the bounce for the Hammers; a feat that, while not unprecedented, is as rare as a proper right back or a 20 goals a season striker. In fact our Premier League record is 5 consecutive wins established during January to February 2006; an achievement that could potentially be matched in the next 3 days – or not!

“He is a big player. He deserves everything and is always there to score goals. Every time I turn to my staff in training and ask who has scored a goal, they say it is always Antonio. I would not say that we taught him to score. It’s his sheer determination, his hunger. You have to keep him close to the box when we have the ball because his stats are unbelievable.”

– Slaven Bilic on Antonio (despite wanting him to play right back)

Our hosts and last year’s Champions have struggled to come even close to last season’s ebullience despite making an admirable and successful fist at Champion’s League qualification. A danger when your team is based on being greater than the sum of the parts is that it can all fall apart when some of those parts stop working. The loss of N’Golo Kante has been Chelsea’s spectacular gain, Riyad Mahrez has failed to inspire, the defensive shenanigans of Huth and Morgan have been under increased refereeing scrutiny and the threat of the ball over the top to Vardy tactic has been neutralised by most opponents. Thankfully the snarling one is suspended for today’s game and will not be able to test the speed or extent of our own learning curve. I did think that once the Champion’s League group stages were over we would see a resurgence from Leicester but as yet, apart from a fine win against Manchester City, it has failed to materialise. Is it possible that the most unexpected Champions since Ipswich Town in 1962 could suffer the same fate and face relegation shortly after?

Head to Head

West Ham’s overall record against Leicester is a moderately good one and the Hammers have avoided defeat on their travels to the east Midlands more often than not. The last 12 meetings have seen honours equitably shared with 4 wins for each team and 4 draws; a sequence that includes our solitary win at the King Power stadium following the Foxes move from Filbert Street in 2002.

	P	W	D	L	F	A	Sequence
Home	61	35	16	10	128	74	LWWDWL
Away	61	15	16	30	74	104	DLLWDD
	122	50	32	40	202	178

Team News

Our player of the season so far, Pedro Obiang, is available again after suspension so let’s hope that Slaven Bilic is not so blinkered as to leave him on the bench and stick with the team that won at Swansea. Personally, I would play Obiang and Kouyate as a defensive midfield two and give Mark Noble some bench time. This would retain the back 4 by keeping Nordtveit at right back despite his offering little attacking capability. Slaven is unlikely to heed my advice, however, and will probably return to his (unaccountably) preferred back 3.

“The first six months of this year were a fairytale – now this is reality. I was waiting for this to happen. We are like a little baby compared to a team like Chelsea. They are like a big man and we’re a little child and we need to grow up.”

– Claudio Ranieri

Manuel Lanzini may be available again but I don’t expect him to make the starting XI with Andre Ayew given the nod again following his maiden goal last weekend. Reece Oxford can be added to the long list of players who have found their way into the treatment room only to find that there is no way out.

If Michail Antonio scores with his head today he will create a Premier League record for headed goals in a calendar year – the golden bonce!

Apart from suspended Jamie Vardy, Leicester are at all full strength with Huth and Fuchs returning from one match bans.

Man in the Middle

A third West Ham away game this season for Anthony Taylor from Manchester; the previous two affairs ending in defeats at Chelsea (where he failed to send off match-winner Diego Costa) and at Everton. Taylor has had a busy season officiating at 20 games in which he has waved 69 Yellow and 3 Red cards.

West Ham at Leicester preview

Can we make it four wins in a row as we reach the half-way point in the season?

Embed from Getty Images

This is our nineteenth Premier League match, and at the end of the game we will have reached the mid-point of the league season. A season that we started poorly, but one where our results have picked up in recent weeks. Leicester were, of course, the very unlikely (5000-1) winners of the Premier League last season, but this has been a much tougher campaign for them. Who would have thought that, despite some of our relatively indifferent performances, we would be sitting above last season’s champions at the half-way point in the season?

The last time we played at Leicester was when we visited them in April. Despite being one down at half time to a goal from Vardy we fought back in the second half (after our old friend Mr Moss had reduced Leicester to ten men by sending Vardy off for diving). Carroll scored from a penalty (Noble had already been substituted when it was awarded), and then Cresswell hit a superb strike to put us 2-1 ahead. It was quite simple now, wasn’t it? 2-1 up, 11 playing against 10, we were about to record yet another famous victory away from home against a top side. Arsenal, Liverpool, Manchester City, Manchester United, Chelsea and Everton – none of them could beat us on their own ground, and we had recorded four wins and two draws against those six teams. Now we were about to beat the champions elect.

But hold on a minute. This is West Ham we are talking about. We have to expect the unexpected. Mr. Moss had indicated that there would be a minimum of four minutes to be added. With around 20 seconds of the four minutes remaining the ball broke to Valencia. It should have been easy to run down the clock, shouldn’t it? But oh no, Valencia lost possession, and with 3 minutes 56 seconds showing on the injury time clock, Carroll innocuously brushed against a Leicester player on the edge of the area.

Of course, referees never give decisions to even up potential mistakes that have made earlier in a game, or to try to appease the home supporters, so Mr. Moss must have been absolutely certain that a foul had been committed and duly awarded Leicester a penalty in the dying seconds. Of course, the same referee had “previous” in this respect, giving Tottenham a penalty in the fifth minute of injury time the previous season, allowing them to draw 2-2 against us. I guess the biggest disappointment for me was our inability to hold on to a lead, something we have been guilty of several times this season, too.

Despite their indifferent league form, Leicester comfortably (and surprisingly?) have reached the last 16 of the Champions League, which is no mean feat. But in their attempt to retain their title, they currently sit in sixteenth place in the league on 17 points, just three points above the drop zone, and trailing us by five points. They have won just four league games, beating three teams that we have also beaten, Swansea, Burnley and Palace, in addition to what was arguably their best performance of the season, a 4-2 victory over Manchester City, where at one stage they led by four goals, before conceding twice in the last ten minutes.

We have a very good record in games against Leicester, and in our last 41 league meetings they have only beaten us on nine occasions, with six games ending as draws. I fancy us to extend our good run with another victory, to set us up nicely for an improved second half of the season. 25 points from 19 games seemed an unthinkable proposition just a month ago. A victory in this game will bring us up to that level. What are the chances?

The Lawro Challenge – Week 19

Seeing the old year out in the company of the BBC’s preeminent pundit predictor.

Xmas Lawro Eighteen rounds of games in the Premier League have now been completed. That means we have now predicted the results of 180 matches. In Week 18, Rich scored 8 points, Geoff 12 points, and Lawro 12 points. Perhaps Rich is getting complacent in the lead as the others are closing the gap.

Proving that if, like every politician or CEO, you carefully select your statistic and starting point Geoff forecast that on the strength of the last 3 weeks he was firmly on track for a comfortable lead by the time the daffodils were out.

In this challenge we award one point for a correct result, and a further two points (making three in total) if the score prediction is spot on.

We now march on to week 19. After this week we will have reached the halfway point of the season.

	Rich	Geoff	Lawro
Total after 17 weeks	144	104	131
Score in week 18	8	12	12
Total after 18 weeks	152	116	143

Predictions – Week 19
	Rich	Geoff	Lawro
Friday
Hull v Everton	1-1	1-2	1-1
Saturday
Burnley v Sunderland	1-0	1-1	1-2
Chelsea v Stoke	2-0	2-1	3-0
Leicester v West Ham	2-2	1-2	1-1
Man U v Middlesbrough	2-0	2-0	2-0
Southampton v WBA	1-1	1-0	1-2
Swansea v Bournemouth	1-2	1-1	2-1
Liverpool v Man City	2-1	1-2	1-1
Sunday
Watford v Tottenham	1-2	1-3	0-2
Arsenal v Palace	2-0	2-1	2-0

This Week in Hammer’s History

Part 2 of the look back at the week 26 December to 1 January in Hammer’s History.

This Week Hammers History This Week in Hammer’s History has already taken a look at some of the memorable Boxing Day games over the years and now, as promised, we will cast an eye over other matches that have taken place between 26 December and 1 January.

In the days where games really did come thick and fast, rather than being a figment of manager and commentator imagination, high scoring matches were quite common; possibly due to players being more liberal in their festive celebrations at a time away when the possibility of twitter and facebook exposure was not a threat.

Fixtures on New Year’s Day are common nowadays but prior to 1974 it was just an ordinary working day and not a public holiday in England. Still time, however, for the first day of the year to feature a number of high scoring encounters of which, the low point, was a 6-0 away drubbing for Alan Curbishley’s struggling side (Tevez an unused substitute) by the mighty Reading.

In 1974, the new holiday brought the Hammers a 4-2 home win (Paddon 2, Gould, Brooking) at home to Norwich while we returned the favour in 1988 going down 1-4 (Cottee) at Carrow Road.

Other New Year’s Day successes came with: a 4-0 away win at Orient in 1980 (Pearson 2, Devonshire, Pike); a 4-1 home victory over Leicester in 1987 (Cottee 2, McAvennie, Dickens) and a 4-2 win at Upton Park against Barnsley in 1990 (Keen 2, Dicks, M Allen).

West Ham also racked up four goals during the course of the week with 4-0 home wins against Blackpool in 1966 (Peters, Moore, Byrne, Hurst) and Blackburn in 1978 (Taylor, Cross, Robson, Own Goal). Noteworthy successes on the road included a 4-3 win at Nottingham Forest in 1962 (Brabrook 2, Byrne. Own Goal) and another victory in 1967 against Leicester by the same 4-2 score-line as in the home fixture on Boxing Day, four days earlier (Dear 2, Brooking, Sissons).

Trevor Brooking 1983-4 On the last day of 1983 West Ham entertained pantomime villains Tottenham Hotspur at Upton Park. The Hammers were riding high in the top division that season having won their opening 5 games and had already beaten Spurs 2-0 at White Hart Lane in September. Hopes were high that season (at least mine were). We had been in the top 3 or 4 for almost all of the season and the team had a firm foundation built around Parkes, Stewart, Martin, Bonds, Brooking and Devonshire plus a young Tony Cottee knocking them in regularly. This was to be Trevor Brooking’s last season before retirement and there was a feeling that it could end with something special.

On the day Spurs were blown away, 4-1, with goals from Stewart, Martin, Cottee and Brooking. At the end of the year and with exactly half of the games played we stood in 3^rd spot, two points behind Manchester United and five behind leaders Liverpool. Sadly this was to be one of the years where we faltered in the second half and despite keeping in touches with leaders until the middle of March West Ham then faded badly to end the season in 9^th place – one point and one place below Tottenham.

Parkes, Stewart, Brush, Walford, Martin, Devonshire, Whitton, Cottee, Swindlehurst, Brooking, Orr