The other night, my wife took our son out to an event in a nearby town, leaving our daughter and I to wing it. I do the majority of the cooking, but on nights like that I prefer to slum it. Pizza and a movie that I recorded on the DVR; The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy. I may be in the minority here, but I think that film is a damned riot. It also turned out to be insightful for today’s game. Somehow, I deduced, we have accidentally activated our own version of something called the Infinite Improbability Drive.
According to The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy, if a spaceship has one of these toys, once it reaches what is known as infinite Improbability, it passes through every conceivable point in every conceivable universe simultaneously. Side effects of using the Infinite Improbability Drive include temporary (and sometimes permanent,) changes to environment and morphological structure, hallucinations, and the calling into being of large marine mammals. There is no other rational explanation to explain a universe in which West Ham United enter a game at Old Trafford as a team full of optimism, hope, and verve, while the home side is…well….a complete and utter wreck. Someone in East London, maybe on their way home from the Liverpool Game, activated an Improbability Drive inside of their Vauxhall and we are all now collectively coming out of it. Will the changes be temporary or permanent? Today would probably clear a bit of that up.
I was convinced last week while watching Man U build a comfy 3-1 lead at Leicester City that Louis Van Gaal was doing what he has done many times in his highly impressive career. Yeah, we know he was won enough silverware to fill many a granny’s dining room armoire. But what’s more interesting is that in a few of those seasons at clubs in Holland, Spain, and Germany his teams have started poorly and ended up on top. Yet the reality of dismantling the core of their back four, with literally months of notice and time to set up for the future yet doing bubkus (an absolutely great Yiddish synonym for nothing), threw a crow bar in that narrative. That is the kind of negligence that a team like, say, US would do. But not these guys.
That’s not to say I went into today’s game brimming with confidence. Hell no. I don’t do confidence when The Hammers are involved. I still believe Man U will right their ship, and today was as good a day as any to anticipate that happening. If the big red bear wakes up from hibernation with us sitting on his paw, there will be hell to pay.
As has been the case since the start of the season, the announcement of the starting eleven is a pretty big event in Twitterland. Kouyate’s injury sparked the debate once again, so before I crashed into my kids induced coma last night I asked a few of my fellow Twitter nutters what they expected. I figured Zarate was the most likely to step up, the question was if he would play in the #10 role or if he would be pushed wide to accommodate Downing staying there. But other ideas were floated around.
Lee Clayton of The Daily Mail was nice enough to join the chat, saying “Could go three at the back, with Collins coming in, could bring in Amalfitano. Or Poyet?” My less famous yet equally football savvy friend @RockyWhu suggested Jenkinson replacing Kouyate, and @MarkHarrison23 wondered if Amalfitano could slot in there. No mention of Zarate from anyone. Then, right after returning from the garbage dump, I see the news from ExWHUemployee that Noble picked up an injury and Poyet might get the call. Minutes later, in what has become a pretty common occurrence, Ex was spot on.
Not that I was happy to see Noble out, which would be nuts, it did add a bit of unpredictability to the squad. Amalfitano and Poyet are players I doubt Van Gaal spent a lot of time planning for. And that’s not to say it will help us at all. But it’s a far cry from seeing Matty Taylor and Vaz Te play in a pinch.
I remember a game a few years ago at Stoke. Matthew Etherington was playing very well for Stoke at the time, and early in the game Lucas Neill made it clear he wanted that to stop. Any player on the New York Rangers ice hockey team would have been proud to have delivered the shoulder check Neill did to Etherington, and Matthew was invisible the rest of the day. I wondered if Song was doing the same thing early on with not one, not two, but three hard and somewhat reckless challenges. Risky game to play, Alex. And in hindsight, it was more a sign of a very bad day at the office then a few bad decisions. The less said about Mr. Fashion’s game the better.
When Rafael streaked down the sideline with a green ocean of space in front of him I was pretty sure it wouldn’t end well. For us, it didn’t. Rooney was breaking into the box un-marked and casually redirected Rafael’s cross past Adrian. You could make an argument that Diego Poyet should have been closer to Rooney, but the re-direction of the ball could have happened in a shoe box.
1-0 to Manchester United.
Yet only two minutes later, Blind acted like he was his surname and headed a back pass right to Enner Valencia. The dictionary says adrenaline is released by the body at times of strong emotion, such as excitement. It should add that it can cause wildly bad football shots that sail into the crowd. It should be 1-1, but the gift was not used.
In the 9th minute Rooney almost found RVP with a looping pass but Cresswell does a nice bit of defending to bock the Dutchman off. A little later DiMaria gets the ball after some nice interplay between Rooney and Blind. Then it was Déjà vu all over again with Rafael down the right but Rooney’s finish was not there.
Their attack is as good and as dangerous as we all feared it would be. But at the same time we seem to have forgotten how to attack. Granted, we haven’t seen much of the ball but going down a goal shouldn’t make you abandon what you have been working on effectively the past few games. They need to worry a little as well.
In the 22nd minute we had our first real attempt of the game, but Rojo made perhaps his best play in his early Manchester United career by blocking Sakho’s attempt from Valencia. And a minute later, our captain and enforcer for the day, Alex Song forgot he was back in England and took way too much time on the ball. Falcao said “I’ll take it, thank you” and passed it to RVP. He always scores against us. Today would be no different.
2-0.
It could have been, and probably should have been, 3-0 when Rafael passed to RVP after another impressive run down the right. RVP then got the ball to DiMaria but this time he played like a mortal and missed the target completely. If Rafael plays this well more consistently, and doesn’t melt down as consistently, Man U will have a handy player for a long time.
At this point I feel bad for my son, who wants me to play Harry Potter with him. Normally, down 2-0 at Old Trafford, I’d happily take a break and grab my wand. But Iain would be mad, unless I can cast a spell that puts the ball behind de Gea.
Goaliarmus!
Holy cow. It worked!
Downing takes a corner and puts it on Tompkins noggin, the ball bounces off the bar and right to our current goal scoring machine Sakho and he gets it in there to pull a goal back. It felt like an interesting combination of old and new. We used our new on the floor stuff to work the corner, and our old get it in the box style to score. I take that as a good sign, not reverting to hoofball.
2-1 at the half.
Today’s lunch. Bolognese sauce from the side of beef I buy every year, served over pappardelle made by a guy using a local variety of New York wheat. Best pasta I’ve ever had. Seriously.
The first ten minutes of the second half were pretty good from our point of view. We didn’t capitulate the way we so often have when playing at one of the bigger clubs. Downing started to move a bit more, forcing Herrera to bring him down and get the first yellow card of the game. Sakho was ohhhh soooo close to bringing us level in the 55th minute when he got on the end of a Cresswell cross and forced a good save from de Gea. We started to make their defenders work, and think, in their penalty area. Will their youth rise to the challenge or fail them?
What should have been the game changer came in the 59th minute when Wayne Rooney tried to perform a vasectomy on Stuart Downing. A bag of frozen peas should have been part of our physio’s treatment. He was probably mad that Manchester United were not awarded a hand ball seconds before, and he let his emotions get the better of him. I’m biased, but it was a really dumb move. The red was deserved, and he will be lucky not to be charged with violent conduct.
Twitter, as well as yours truly, was dumbstruck in the 61st minute when Amalfitano came off for Carlton Cole. At a time when we have just been given more space to work in, Sam chose to take off a guy who can get into said space and cause them problems and replace him for a guy who stays in one space and causes us problems. That is NOT Cole bashing. I respect him tremendously. But that made no sense to me.
Sakho came close again on a pass from Downing in the 62nd minute, leading to me to jot down this question. Is Sakho more of a threat on long balls than Andy Carroll? Not looking for answers or debates just yet, just musing.
Jenkinson came on for Demel in the 64th. That’s more like it, Sam.
Yet our first ten minutes up a man didn’t look much different than the previous 59 minutes we played at even strength. In fact, Manchester United barely looked threatened at times. They have so many quality players I shouldn’t have been that shocked. But I was annoyed.
In the 74th minute, Ander Herrera came off. He had been one of their better players on the day, so it was more or less good news. But could it have been a blessing in disguise when Antonio Valencia came on.
Like Sakho last week, let’s get it straight. Good Valencia, and Bad Valencia.
Van Gaal was rightfully angry when his team couldn’t kill off Leicester City. Bad Valencia has the experience needed to do that job. Experience on the whole as an invaluable tool was in evidence moments later when Sakho got the ball on a break but hurried his pass to Good Valencia when a wee bit of patience…and experience…might have done wonders.
With Kevin Nolan out, I’ve been pondering a theory. It’s a theory I made up, so I’ve had a lot of time to ponder it. With Good Valencia and Sakho working well together, moving in and around the box, could there be more opportunity for Nolan to do his poaching regimen than he has with Carroll as a lone target? So when Nolan came on for Poyet, with Twitter going apoplectic, I was a bit intrigued. Zarate might have been a better choice, but with 15 minutes to go I understood the argument.
In the 82nd minute Good Valencia started something that looked a bit like the moves he used to score his rocket at Hull. Move to his right, move a bit more, and fire. I prayed, but the prayer wasn’t answered. Blind deflected the shot wide and we did very little with the corner.
He then made two plays in quick order that I am going to punish him by dropping the word Good from the paragraph. Because he was awful. He took a corner that didn’t come close to reaching the box, and wasn’t high enough for my seven year old to head it. Then he wasted a free kick by trying to do it himself when they were so vulnerable in the box. I swear every human being associated with West Ham threw their hands up and said “what are you doing”?
I watched the final few minutes while on the phone with my best mate, Jon. For whatever reason he was about two seconds ahead of me. He screamed “YES”! I watched Nolan attack the cross, and yelled “YES”! My yelling made it impossible for me to hear Jon then say “Flag Up”. When I saw that two seconds later I didn’t say that. I’m confident in your ability to guess what I did say.
A little bit more flurrying in the final moments gave us slim hope, but despite the man advantage for over half an hour we couldn’t get it done.
After a game it can be very hard to separate how you feel about the result from what your expectations were. I expected Sam to revert a bit back to old form, not go after them, and we get flogged. That didn’t happen. So despite the loss, in a game most expected us to lose, I’m looking at the positive signs of a work in progress. Yes, I still question Amalfitano coming off for Cole. I think even if Morgan was spent, Zarate would have been a better fit. And I understand the questions about Nolan, but as I said before that is a role he might be suited for. And if it weren’t for a very close offside call it would have turned out to be a master stroke.
We went to Old Trafford. We lost. But if things continue on the path we are on, normal service has most definitely not been restored.