Tag: #forest

Fans Fan Flames As Moyes Faces Forest Fire

After last weekend’s slaughter West Ham put their winless 2024 run to the test against Nottingham Forest at the City Ground. What could possibly go wrong for the Moyesball machine?

I’ve said this before but it is a mystery to me that anyone would support an extension to David Moyes contract at the London Stadium. Is it really possible that anyone who has actually sat and watched West Ham play recently would reach the conclusion that two and a half more years of this is exactly what is needed?

The ritual humiliation at the hands of Arsenal last Sunday was the perfect storm of the manager’s shortcomings condensed into a single ninety minute horror show – bizarre team selection, outdated tactics, lack of ambition, reckless depletion of the squad, poor substitution policy, and the inability to make in-game adjustments according to circumstances. Let’s face it, once the inevitable first goal was conceded there was never going to be a way back for the Hammers.

Remember this is the team that Moyes has built and coached for himself over the past four season – at not insignificant cost. Of the 14 players used against Arsenal only Ben Johnson and Aaron Cresswell were at the club before he arrived. Yet to hear the manager talk you would get the impression that events on the pitch have nothing to do with. His was a cunning plan whose brilliance was only let down by the players executing it badly.

Moyes continues to get plenty of support from the pundits and media commentators community who demonstrate a disappointingly superficial view of the club and its fans. After all, West Ham are merely a support act to the big six in their thinking. The results look OK, so complaints are delusional. Get real! The idea that fans might want something more than the current turgid, unadventurous offering is unthinkable. What, they want to be entertained as well?

Most of the fan polls I’ve seen are hoping for change with many threatening to give us season tickets if the manager is renewed. Even through the Board’s financially skewed lens they must be starting realise that this team can only scrape a top ten finish at best and will not be playing in Europe next season. And Moyesball is not the biggest selling point to attract promising talent.

I’m not at all convinced by the frequently aired argument that Moyes has done a fantastic job at West Ham – although that might depend on what you expect from your manager. On paper his legacy is decent with consecutive top seven finishes and the club’s first trophy for over 40 years. The history books will not be concerned with the state of the current squad – small, slow and old – with how much money has been spent to achieve that, or that the trophy win – as welcome as it was – offered little by way of stiff competition. West Ham are reported to be the eighth richest club in the Premier League – that is our benchmark as an established top tier club. We should not be run and play like a newly promoted club that is seeking consolidation

It is difficult to look at West Ham and believe that a platform for the future is under construction. That is a reflection on both the Board and the manager. Temporary fixes to long standing structural problems have unfortunately been papered over by European glory.

There’s no doubt that Moyes first full season at the London Stadium was full of promise, particularly during the purple patch when Jesse Lingard was surging into space in the opposition half. It was by most measures the Hammers best ever Premier League season. But there was a watershed for Moyes and his tactics which occurred as we welcomed in 2022. Between the start of the 2020/21 season and December 2021 Moyes could boast a 50% win percentage and an average of 1.7 points per game. The record since then (to date) shows the win percentage dropping to 33% with a return of 1.2 points per game. Hardly impressive! The consequence of everyone knowing how West Ham play and a manager who is unable to change his twenty year old tactics.

Apparently, the club has now returned to the groundhog cycle of giving the manager three or four games to save his job. These would be away to Nottingham Forest and Everton and home to Brentford and Burnley. On current performances, the Burnley game in mid-March looks the earliest opportunity to put an end to the 2024 winless run – and, I suppose, to reset the doomsday sacking clock one more. What a way to run a football club.

The first of these games is this weekend’s visit to the City Ground which is always a passionate and tricky affair. Despite impressive wins over Newcastle and Manchester United following the appointment of Nuno Espirito Santo, Forest are also winless in the league in 2024 – although they did manage to defeat both Blackpool and Bristol City in the FA Cup.  They will view the game against a shell-shocked West Ham as a perfect opportunity to put daylight between themselves and the rest of the relegation pack. How easily the Hammers defence succumbed to the Arsenal overload at set pieces will not have gone unnoticed.

Early team news suggests that both Lucas Paqueta and Michail Antonio will continue to be absent for the Hammers. It leaves Moyes with few options to mix up his beleaguered charges. Something needs to be done at the back and there must be huge concerns about Kurt Zouma’s ongoing fitness woes. A centre-back pairing  of Nayef Aguerd and Dinos seems most probable. But don’t rule out the tantalising prospect of Aaron Cresswell and Angelo Ogbonna pushing for recalls in a safety first back five. The standard Moyes response to a big loss is to get back to basics and become even more cautious.

There was an amusing story online yesterday that West Ham were dismayed to discover Kalvin Phillips had eaten too many chip butties and was overweight when he joined West Ham. Apparently, a West Ham medical does not include being weighed which led to Moyes unknowingly putting him straight into the first team. Whether Phillips or Edson Alvarez gets to partner the undroppable Tomas Soucek is an unanswered question. Soucek does seem to be a decent fella but is there a more technically limited outfield player in the Premier League right now? The giveaway for me is the number of times he heads the ball or hooks it first time rather than rely on his control.

In attack, Maxwell Cornet wanted to know whether he needed to bring his boots along this weekend. I wonder whether we can top six touches in the opposition box for this game?

I’ll admit that at half-time last weekend I was half-hoping Arsenal would go on to score double figures causing Moyes to quit in embarrassment. I’m similarly torn this week. Never want to see my team beaten but equally want a fresh face and new ideas in the manager’s dugout. I know that relies on the Board making a sensible appointment as replacement, but we have nothing if we don’t have hope. COYI!

Moyes Not-So-Merry Men Must Raise Their Game To Fend Off Forest Fire

With just four points from the last seven league games, West Ham need new ideas and fresh impetus to avoid entering into the international break as a bottom six club.

If I could turn back time, I might choose to spend the evening listening to a 1970s supermarket music playlist on Spotify rather than watching West Ham take on Olympiacos in the Europa League. Even allowing for the low expectations set for a good many of the European group games, this was especially dire. Ninety minutes of forgettable mediocrity.

The post-match baloney from David Moyes featured his greatest hits of well-worn, trite excuses. “We didn’t play as well as we had hoped”. “The opposition have years of European experience”. “Coming away with the three points was the most important thing”.  “They were defensively well organised and stopped us getting our crosses in” – if only there were alternative routes to goal, David.

There is a generally accepted rule that all successful sides will need to win ugly from time to time, but lately West Ham know no other way. Supporters should always want their team to win but don’t we also want to be entertained while they’re at it? Is there any lasting pride or pleasure to be had when resilience and organisation are valued above everything else?

In the end the Hammers wreaked their much-wanted revenge over their Greek opponents who had ended their unbeaten streak two weeks earlier. But it came from the game’s single moment of genuine quality rather than as the result of sustained assault. The presence of a simple yet beautifully crafted goal was incongruous in such a drab match. A sumptuous, chipped pass by James Ward-Prowse perfectly placed for Lucas Paqueta well-timed run into the box to volley home. The on-field decision to flag for offside was representative of the shocking officiating on show all night. Replays clearly showing that Paqueta’s faultless calculation of the angles would have made even Pythagoras proud. Good old VAR!

In one of those quirks of the fixture list, West Ham now find themselves facing two teams owned by the same shady Greek mogul, Evangelos Marinakis, within the space of three days. Despite serial accusations of match fixing and other nefarious activities, Marinakis was considered fit and proper enough to become the majority shareholder of Nottingham Forest in 2017.  His tenure has seen the former European champions return to the top tier of English football following promotion to the Premier League in May 2022.

Forest have made an acceptable start to the new season having accumulated one less point than the Hammers from their opening 11 games. They were very poor travellers throughout last season, and although their struggles on the road have largely persisted they have tasted victory at Chelsea and secured a goalless draw at Palace, where they were easily the better team. Should they win today they would leapfrog West Ham and potentially enter the international break sitting in the top half. The same outcome could see ourselves, the one-time league leaders, drop down into the bottom six.

Today’s game is the last of seven played by West Ham since the last blank international weekend. In that time, there have been two cup wins but not a single league point – having lost all three games to Aston Villa, Everton, and Brentford. It is a tough schedule but still a terribly poor return for a team that sets up not to lose. Since the start of last season, Moyes team have lost 25 and won just 15 of 49 games. This leaves a triple whammy where the club has spent bags of money on transfers, where the football remains tedious, and is not yielding results.

During his time as West Ham boss, Moyes has spoken about instilling a big club, winning mentality to the club. Just as he has talked about Red Bull models. Recently, he has again claimed to have made changes in approach to make us more expansive. This has completely passed me by. As they used to say in banking: “the words and numbers do not match!”

The squad may now contain additional flair players, but the underlying fundamentals have not changed. The overwhelming focus on compact defence and denying space to opponents means that when we eventually win the ball there are too few passing options available. Players are bunched together, are not able to create space and switch play, and become easy prey to the opposition press. Or else it results in hopeful blind first-time flicks to no-one in particular. I have to believe it is coaching rather than individual technical ability that is causing the problem, otherwise a change of manager would make no difference. Sure, upgrades are needed in certain positions, but we have seen how progressive managers have breathed new life into previously dispirited squads.

West Ham will need to up their game from midweek if they are to win today. Forest are one of a small group of teams who boast less possession than the Hammers and they will be happy to sit back and play on the break. They will have done their homework and be fully aware of the Hammer’s creative limitations when allowed the lion’s share of the ball. A ponderous build up ending with hopeful crosses into the box. Or is today the day that Moyes finally reveals a cunning new plan from his dusty box of managerial tricks? Probably not!

Kurt Zouma continues to struggle with his various injuries so it will be as you are at the back except for a return between the sticks for Alphonse Areola. There was a pyrrhic victory for Areola in the week when he picked up the Premier League save of the month award – a shame it came in a 4-1 defeat at Aston Villa.

If Moyes is considering changes it will be possible recalls for stalwarts Michail Antonio and Thomas Soucek. The unintended consequence of leaving Soucek on the bench is that Ward-Prowse is consigned to a far deeper defensive position where he is way less effective. He started his West Ham career at a blistering pace in a more advanced role but perhaps this was creating to much excitement. In midweek he was deployed even deeper than Edson Alvarez. The sublime assist apart, his contribution was mainly backwards and sideways passing reminiscent of a late career Mark Noble tribute act.

I pray to the footballing gods that Moyes again leaves Michail Antonio on the bench and sticks with Jarrod Bowen up top. But equally he needs to realise that Bowen isn’t a straight replacement for Antonio. Other changes to shape are necessary to provide the support required to make this work effectively. Bowen offers greater control and finesse plus the opportunity for interplay and darting runs that can be key in unlocking packed defences. Bowen is not the long term answer to the Hammer’s striking woes but he is the best we have for now.

A memory will have popped up on Danny Ings Facebook page during the week to remind him of his solitary West Ham league goals in this corresponding fixture last season. Ings scoring twice in an unusually comfortable 4-0 win. Divin Mubama, on the other hand, will need a rest following his midweek run-out – the one-minute manager having chosen to bring him on in the 89th minute to show what he can do.

Quite what has become of Said Benrahma in his three years at the London Stadium is beyond all comprehension. His confidence levels appear to have been shattered to the point where every move he attempts is the wrong one. If footballing decisions were a multiple-choice paper, he would regularly be scoring 0%.

I long for the days when I looked forward to West Ham games with anticipation. I find myself conflicted between wanting the team to win against the desire for much-needed change in the way they are managed. Unless Moyes pulls off a shock cup-winning treble, there can be no way he will get a new contract in the summer. With the board reluctant to act before that I fear we will limp along as we are until May. Seeing out the season will be like watching a goldfish that has jumped out of its bowl and is flapping around on the carpet until it slowly dies – and being unable to do anything about it.

We might possibly win today. But it’s not going to be pretty. If West Ham are winning at the break can we ask Kevin Nolan to lock Moyes in the toilet and prevent him sucking all the energy out of the half-time dressing room? COYI!

Ward Prowse’s Perfect Precision Pass, Paqueta Pounces, Olympiacos Overcome.

West Ham march on in Europe, but can they get back to winning ways in the league when Forest visit the London Stadium on Sunday?

VAR hasn’t received the best press in recent times. But West Ham were thankful for its intervention on Thursday evening. If we were relying on the naked eye of the assistant referee then the result of the game against the Greeks from Piraeus would most likely have been a goalless draw. West Ham were celebrating when Paqueta pounced to volley home Ward Prowse’s wonderful precision pass over the top. A beautifully crafted pass and finish was about to be chalked off when the flag was raised to indicate offside. But thanks to the VAR check Ortega was seen to be closer to his own goal than our brilliant Brazilian and the goal quite rightly stood. And how the players celebrated in front of the visiting Greek supporters, milking their revenge win. West Ham were not happy with how their opponents celebrated their win two weeks ago, and vengeance for that was high on the player’s minds prior to the game.

Thankfully Manager Moyes had made changes from the weakened team he put out that lost the reverse fixture a fortnight ago. The win leaves us at the top of the group on the basis of head-to-head against Freiburg who also had a comfortable win over Backa Topola on the night. A win against the Serbians at the end of November would mean a draw against the Germans in the final group game in mid-December would be enough to clinch top spot in the group. And top spot is important in this competition with the runners up facing a game against a third placed side dropping down from the Champions League.

Division of opinion about the merits of the manager continues in the build up to the kick-off against Forest on Sunday. Recent poor domestic form with three consecutive defeats has seen us slip into the bottom half of the table where we are now twelfth with 14 points from our eleven games, just one point and one place above our visitors who have won one and drawn three of their last five games.

A worrying statistic is that Forest have won only one away game against West Ham in almost 40 years. How we manage to end those poor runs of our opponents is a trait we seem to specialise in. In fairness however the sample size is not as big as it might be against many other teams as we haven’t always been in the same division. Another one to watch out for coming up soon – Burnley have now lost six consecutive home games – you know who their next home game is against after the International break, don’t you?

Forest’s three wins this season have been against Sheffield United, Chelsea, and last week against in-form Aston Villa. They have only lost four games (compared to our five) although all four have been on their travels. We don’t have a good record in games that follow Europa League fixtures on Thursday nights and have yet to win one on a following Sunday in this campaign.

Thanks to the BBC I was made aware that the manager who holds the record for the most defeats in Premier League matches is Harry Redknapp with 238. I’ll leave you to guess who follows close behind on 237. Another unwanted record on its way shortly I reckon.

If we are serious about becoming a top-half team then this is a game that we surely need to win. I did suggest something similar prior to the recent Everton game too. Look what happened there.

It’s a frustrating watch at the moment with all the attacking talent we have at our disposal. As Geoff pointed out recently, recent league results have been abysmal. Just four points from the last seven games, a rate of return that if continued to the end of the season would result in a total of 30 points, and a likely relegation struggle.

Here is a paragraph from my article prior to the recent Everton game:

I was interested when reading one of the social media groups of West Ham fans whose members, looking at our upcoming games, Everton, Brentford, Forest, Burnley, and Palace, were making predictions as to how many points we would be collecting from those five ‘easy’ (on paper) games. There are many optimists out there who were saying 15, and perhaps 13 while others were taking a more realistic approach, some pessimists even going as low as 3, or even lower in a couple of cases. The ‘optimists’ were then ‘attacking’ the ‘pessimists’ or ‘realists’ accusing them of not being ‘true’ supporters, suggesting they should get behind the team, or go and support someone else. The other group fought back suggesting they were entitled to their opinion and the exchange was a good example of extreme opinions that exist in many social media areas.

Two games down and no points yet I wonder how many points we will end up collecting now from that run of supposedly ‘easy’ games?

Bookmakers have us as one of eight teams who are odds on to collect three points in their games this weekend, the others being Arsenal, Manchester United, Newcastle, Villa, Brighton, Liverpool, and Manchester City. The other 7 are in the current top eight of the Premier League. Only Tottenham of the top 8 are not priced at odds on to win their game. Do you have the same belief as the bookmakers that odds on is a true reflection of our chances to win this game? So many of our games this season have ended 3-1, both wins and defeats. Perhaps a 3-1 win on Sunday is my prediction with no great conviction or supporting evidence. What are the chances?

West Ham – It’s a sad, sad, situation, and it’s getting more and more absurd

A little less conversation, a little more action please

Have you read Geoff’s article published yesterday? If you missed it look it up now. It tells you everything you need to know about West Ham’s current plight. The insipid display at Tottenham, the board dithering over a dithering manager who has presided over a team in freefall for more than a year now, unadventurous and inadequate tactics, lack of entertainment, a relegation dogfight that really shouldn’t be a situation for one of the world’s richest clubs, and a cautionary approach taken to another level last week.

Even our captain, Declan Rice took a veiled swipe at the tactics employed by our manager in the wake of last Sunday’s debacle. He was spot on when he was quoted as saying: “When you play with five at the back and the three like we set up today, maybe our strikers felt a bit isolated when we got the ball up to them – they didn’t really have enough around them, not enough support.”

He was only saying what a vast number of West Ham fans have been for some time now; the approach to games is wrong, and the fact that he sticks to a rigid formation when we don’t really have the right sort of players to make the most of lining up that way (for example wingbacks that are really just defenders and don’t really pose much of an attacking threat). It is no coincidence that we are seventh in the Premier League when it comes to defence and not conceding too many goals, but sixteenth when looking at goals scored (just 19 in our 23 games this season, a woeful figure).

If we are going to get out of the desperate situation we are in then we need to score more goals and win more matches. We need a more attacking formation, and not an isolated front man. Antonio was reasonably successful at this a year or so ago, but he has lost form, and he barely scores these days. The manager has even used others (Haller, Scamacca) in a similar role even though it is clear to most of us that they are not suited to playing in this way, their strengths lie elsewhere, but David Moyes (in his obstinacy?) fails to recognise this.

In previous articles I have been analysing the position and current form of the bottom teams. I will continue to concentrate on the bottom nine as Palace in twelfth place are only six points clear of the relegation zone. The points of the bottom nine (all with 15 games still to play) are:

Palace 26, Forest 25, Leicester 24, Wolves 23, Everton 21, Bournemouth 21, West Ham 20, Leeds 19, Southampton 18.

The points gained in the last 6 games shows today’s opponents Nottingham Forest ahead of the rest, but we have now slipped in this guide to current form:

Forest 11, Wolves 10, Leicester 7, Everton 6, West Ham 6, Southampton 6, Bournemouth 5, Palace 4, Leeds 2.

Ironically, the early season fixture won by Forest by a solitary goal could easily have gone the other way with a slightly different interpretation of rules (Benrahma’s disallowed goal) and a little more luck (twice hitting the crossbar) as well as a better taken penalty (Rice). If we had won that game then we would now be on 23 points and Forest on 22. But that’s football. Will that very first game come back to bite us at the end of the season?

And talking of interpretation of rules, that old chestnut (handball) has been a talking point in our last two games with Soucek (against Chelsea) and Kehrer (against Tottenham) both handling the ball in the process of falling and that was why penalties were not awarded against us. A new rule this season says that if a player is falling and the ball touches their hand / arm when it is between their body and the ground (but not extended to make the body bigger) then that is not handball.

Whether you like this new rule or others (designed to make the interpretation of handball simpler – ha ha), that is how the referees and VAR looked at these two examples although pundits on TV tended to disagree quite vehemently. As it happens it made no difference to the points in the Tottenham game, and we benefitted by one point (if the penalty had been successful) in the Chelsea match. But as far as Chelsea were concerned this was simply karma from the reverse fixture where we were robbed.

With the bottom five clubs achieving less than a point a game so far this season, averaging a point a game equalling fifteenth place in the table at present, and so many clubs potentially involved in the relegation struggle, then how many points from the final 15 games will be enough to ensure safety? I reckon that a final total of 37 or 38 might potentially be enough to confirm Premier League football next season. That would mean 17 or 18 from those games if my estimate turns out to be correct. Based on current averages then 35 could be enough. In the last five seasons the total needed to ensure safety was 36, 29, 35, 35, 34. In the ‘29’ season three teams were significantly detached which is not the case so far this time, so that one may not be representative of what is needed. Have a look at the remaining fixtures and see if you can tell where the requisite number of points will come from.

25/2 Home v Forest

4/3 Away v Brighton

12/3 Home v Villa

19/3 Away v Man City

2/4 Home v Southampton

5/4 Home v Newcastle

8/4 Away v Fulham

16/4 Home v Arsenal

22/4 Away v Bournemouth

26/4 Home v Liverpool

29/4 Away v Palace

6/5 Home v Man Utd

13/5 Away v Brentford

20/5 Home v Leeds 28/5 Away v Leicester

Five wins and two or three draws from those fifteen games might just be enough. If you think that should be easy bear in mind that we have only achieved five wins and five draws so far from 23 games, that is eight more played than those that are remaining. Of the eight home games, four are against teams in the bottom half (the next three and the last one). In the seven remaining fixtures away from home, three are against teams in the bottom half (three of the last four). Therefore, a fairly equal spread in terms of potential difficulty based on league positions.

I began this article referring to Geoff’s excellent summary of our current plight and the action perhaps needed (change the manager?) to stay up. He ended the piece with the sentence ‘It’s a sad, sad, situation.’ You know the Elton John song – Sorry Seems to Be The Hardest Word? Some of the lyrics from the song sum it up nicely:

It’s sad, so sad

It’s a sad, sad situation

And it’s getting more

And more absurd

Note to the board from an entirely different (Elvis) song – A little less conversation a little more action please!

Towering Incompetence: Incendiary West Ham Atmosphere May Be Fanned By Forest Fire

The ongoing saga of last chances for David Moyes has now been running for longer than an Eastenders story line – doof, doof, doof, doof, doof, doof, doof, doof, doof!

How many last chances does a failing manager get to have. I was convinced the game was up after et another typically insipid display at Tottenham. But no, he gets to fail another day.

I would have thought that by the time a Board gets to the stage of giving manager’s last chances, you might as well fire him and be done with it. It will only be a matter of time, anyway. Stupendous turnarounds in fortune rarely happen. And this is a team that has been in decline for over a year, and woeful for the best part of this season.

Should the Hammers eke out a victory win this weekend, and then lose (as usual) at Brighton, is the clock then reset once again to last chance for the home fixture with Villa? Repeat until relegated. What a way to run a football club!

Even the media have now woken up to recognise that David Moyes is an emperor without any clothes. At last, journalists are scratching their heads and questioning the merits of our unadventurous, unambitious manager. It is only fellow dinosaurs such as Graeme Souness who believes everything can be fixed by the players rolling up their sleeves up and showing some grit. The players are a victim of the tactics, not the other way round. The squad can’t be changed now, but manager and tactics can. Freeing the players from Moyes inertia is the only escape route.

We should remember, West Ham are one the world’s top twenty richest clubs. They have spent hundreds of millions on players. Yet Moyes talks about fans having unrealistic expectations as if it is a low budget operation. I doubt many supporters are demanding repeated top six finishes, but we would like to be entertained and should be nowhere near a relegation scrap. 

Last weekend was the latest in a string of tame surrenders – the scene set even before kick off. Fighting talk about drawn games not being good enough didn’t make it past the team selection. Starting the game with a maximum of two attack minding players in the side was all the incentive that the opposition needed to know the points were theirs. There is nothing to fear from West Ham at the best of times – no explosive pace, no accomplished dribbler, and the main set piece threat having been sold in January – but this was caution taken to another extreme. One more notch on the bedpost of failed away trips to ‘big six’ clubs.

It has been reported that the Board’s stance on a stay of execution was swayed by improvements in form since the Everton game. I do wonder what they have been watching from their lofty position? Had there been a run of victories then fair enough. But the club need a better rate of return than five points from four games if they are to avoid the drop.

It was supremely ironic to read David Sullivan’s rant in the week about how fantastic an organisation the Premier League is – and how it didn’t need regulation – when he is doing everything in his power to leave it by the trapdoor.

There was one piece of good news in the week as the U18s reached the semi-finals of the FA Youth Cup for the first time since 1999 – the days of Joe Cole and Michael Carrick. There looks to be a lot of promise in the youth ranks, even if there is still a lot of development yet to be done. We hear mostly about the goalscorers – Divin Mubama and Callum Marshall – but George Earthy, Lewis Orford and Oliver Scarles all look to be great prospects. Interesting that the Youths play nothing like the first team in style or formation. The watching Moyes would have been livid with the boys pressing for a fourth goal once they had gone ahead in extra time. All behind the ball, boys!

The sad news of the week was the passing of John Motson. He and Brian Moore were both top class commentators who knew their primary job was to tell us what was going on – and knew when to let the action do the talking. Nostalgia’s not what it used to be but they were happier and simpler days at West Ham.

Oh, Devonshire round the back …… Oh, right across ….. It’s free ….. Driven in ……. And is it a goal? It is! Brooking, ………. Trevor Brooking. The ball ricocheted in off him and West Ham are in front.

RIP Motty 1980 FA Cup Final

Tomorrow’s game will be a first home league meeting with Nottingham Forest since January 2012 when two Mark Noble penalties took the Hammers to the top of the Championship.

It wasn’t long ago that Forest looked red-hot favourites for a quick return to the second tier, despite their early season win against West Ham. Yet an upsurge in results has lifted them to the higher fringes of the relegation quagmire. They currently sit five places and five points above their hosts. They are one of only three teams to have scored fewer goals than West Ham this season, while conceding nine more. Defensively they look suspect, but they do have pace in attack through Brennan Johnson and the always busy Morgan Gibbs-White. One-time West Ham nemesis Chris Wood might also feature in the game. Woods had been well marshalled in recent encounters by Craig Dawson, but obviously that is no longer an option.

So, what approach can we expect from the Moyes book of old school football tactics for this one? We know from experience that change only happens at glacial speed. He will usually stick with a formation, regardless of opposition, until something dramatic forces his hand to change it. It is a self-evident truth that the route to survival is scoring goals – it is only Moyes who believes not conceding them is more important. If he picks the same formation – with three/ five at the back – for this game, there could be mutiny in the stands before kick-off. It is overly cautious, and the wingbacks do not offer sufficient attacking threat to compensate.

I have argued for some time that West Ham should be lining up in a 4-3-3 formation. Ideally a midfield three of Rice, Paqueta and Downes but Rice, Soucek and Downes would do if Paqueta is unavailable. Then it must be a front three who are geared towards pushing forward and playing closer together. Is any more evidence needed that the isolated striker gambit is never going to work?

Forest will be well aware of a potential powder keg atmosphere at the London Stadium tomorrow. A trademark cautious team selection by Moyes and a typically slow start by the team will play right into the opponents hands. As a supporter I feel conflicted. I want Moyes gone but I would rather three of the most winnable points remaining were not sacrificed to achieve that. But it is hard to envisage a scenario where Moyes stays and we are not relegated. It’s a sad, sad, situation. COYI!

Hammers Need To Be Forest Fresh Following Stale City Opener

West Ham must dampen the enthusiasm of newly promoted Nottingham Forest in their first Premier League home game for twenty-three years if they are to leave the City Ground with today’s spoils.

With the inevitable opening day defeat to Manchester City out of the way, we should ideally be focusing on the nuts and bolts of the nascent season and the potential for another tilt at a top six finish. Yet, it is the failures, frustrations, and foreboding of the transfer window that continues to grab the attention. Football matches tend to come along as a distraction to the latest blind alley pursuit of exciting major signings from across the continent.   

I’m prepared to accept that making sensible transfer decisions might not be as easy as we fans imagine, but equally surely it isn’t as difficult as West Ham repeatedly make it. I’m really not a fan of the transfer window extending beyond the start of the season and had always feared that most of our business would be left right until the end.

The dilemma facing David Moyes & Co is how to find and attract players who will improve the squad, who can be recruited at an affordable (knock down) price, and who are not going to be on the radar of more illustrious and well-to-do clubs. The panacea would be a shrewd scouting network uncovering a stream of young talent, from home and abroad, even if it means they use West Ham as a stepping-stone to future glory elsewhere. Decent scouting has long been neglected at the club although I suppose that is what led to the pursuit of Onana – but his was a hefty price tag for a bet on potential.

It also appears impossible for West Ham to keep any of their proposed deals under wraps until the ink has fully dried. A habit that allows opportunity for others – Everton and Newcastle – to nip in and hijack the deal at the eleventh hour. Especially, with our Board unable to resist the temptation of engaging in drawn out haggling processes, a few quid at a time.

It is unfortunate that the Hammers are starting from such a position of weakness in squad numbers and ability. A consequence of neglect and bad decisions over the preceding years. While Moyes achievements over the last two years have been remarkable it is built around the phenomenal talent of Declan Rice and an effective style of play (organisation, set pieces and counter attacks) that has made the best use of resources available. It has worked wonders but can only do so until opponents understand it limitations and how to combat it – as we saw from Manchester City last week. There simply aren’t the players available with the pace, finesse, and creativity to pose different questions and mix things up. To me, these limitations are equivalent to what Moyes said about the team being stale last Sunday. A team without ideas once their A-game is thwarted.

On the face of it, the signings of Gianluca Scamacca, Nayef Aguerd, and Maxwell Cornet are just the type of players needed. But it is only a start. Another four or five additional top-notch signings, at least, are required before the end of August if the season is going to amount to anything worthwhile. It is staggering that one of the league’s thinnest squads has seen more players leave than arrive so far. OK, so we now have a striker, but remain alarmingly short in other critical positions – left back, centre back, play-maker – with the season already underway – and with another four league games to be played before the window closes. Fair enough, teams can recover from a poor start (Arsenal last season is a good example), but that’s a lot of important points to put at risk due solely to self-inflicted transfer incompetence.

Having fallen into the trap of tunnelling down the transfer rabbit hole, we should turn our attention to today’s Premier League encounter against Nottingham Forest. A first top-flight meeting between the two clubs this millennium following Forest’s relegation in 1998/99. That season witnessing a scoreless draw at the City Ground in September 1998 and a 2-1 Hammers win (Ian Pearce and Lampard Jr) at Upton Park in February 1999.

The hosts were something of a surprise package last year but despite buying enthusiastically looked short on quality when losing to Newcastle last weekend. Still, there will sure to be a cup-tie like atmosphere at the City Ground today and West Ham will need to be on their toes to weather the early storm. And, of course, there is the goalscoring peril of Judas Lingard to keep quiet. It could well be a tough season for Forest and Lingard is an odd choice to build your team around.

It would be a huge surprise to me if Scamacca and Cornet don’t start today but maybe I am underestimating the caution of Moyes. The major West Ham selection issue though is at centre back where, with even less options to chose from, Ben Johnson is a probable to continue alongside Kurt Zouma. Elsewhere, we can only hope the manager can prise more than huff and puff from the combined talents of Manuel Lanzini, Pablo Fornals and Said Benrahma.

I can’t see this game being a classic and assuming West Ham can snuff out the early Forest threat, I predict we will go on to win 3-1. COYI!