Writing these reports has taught me a few things not only about my relationship with our club, but about how many irrational dislikes I have for other clubs. Today, for example, brought one Alan Pardew back to Upton Park. Or as a few of my mates call him, That P@#*k Pards. You can probably guess the middle word if you give yourself a minute or so. It’s not a view shared by many. In fact, I have read many an article hoping for his return to West Ham. I don’t understand why. It’s not like his record with us, Charlton, Southampton and now Newcastle is anything to do somersaults over. Player and staff unrest, fall outs with chairmen, and the rumours about his….uhhhh….various relationships.
No thank you.
Having said that, you have to give credit where credit is due. Lazarus would be proud of Pards resurrection this season. Five straight league wins, with a draw against Swansea before that, has given Newcastle 16 out of a possible 18 points. When I studied our fixtures leading up to Christmas a few weeks ago I saw this as a game against a team struggling near the drop zone. Now it’s a game battling for some extra games next season.
As for us, the injury crisis that took us by surprise last week got a little better. Kouyate, Downing and Noble were all in the starting eleven, but Valencia, Song and Sakho were still out. Then yesterday we got word that Sakho was basically mugged by the physio for Senegal and may out for at least a month. Yet for me the biggest surprise was the player that started on the bench, Zarate. If there was one lesson learned last week it was that Zarate should have been the one partnered up front with Carroll. Sam, however, didn’t get the memo and for reasons I could not get my head around Jarvis got a start instead. Jacob Steinberg tweeted that Downing would be out wide to play to Carroll’s strengths. Enter the wormhole and travel back in time to lobbing it in to one up front.
Ayoze Perez has been on fire for Newcastle during their terrific run of form, and in the opening minutes we saw why. First he cut between Tomkins and Collins after receiving the ball from Gouffran but his shot went wide. Then Sissoko fed a nice through ball for him, but his foul on Tomkins stopped play. Minutes later, the Sissoko to Perez party was on again. This time Kouyate was there to clear. Three chances from the same pair in the first five minutes did not put me at ease to watch the game.
West Ham looked like they started the game in the eighth minute when Jarvis chased down a flick on from Carroll. Jarvis passed to an oncoming Downing whose shot was straight at Rob Elliot. That was the only bright moment of the first ten minutes, and I use that term lightly. Despite a lineup that looked like it was set up to play to Carroll’s supposed strengths, the big man looked lonely. The support he needed was not there. In any form. Not in crosses, not in players there to run on to his flicks.
Meaning, no Zarate.
In the 13th minute, Carroll did have someone run into a space to collect a ball off of his head. That someone was Downing. But when Downing tried to return the favor with a cross into the box, nobody was there to cash in. A few minutes later Kouyate and Amalfitano tried to get in on the sort of action when the Frenchman laid a good ball for Kouyate to run onto down the right. His cross was blocked by Gouffran and it eventually ended up as a goal kick. A minute later Cresswell made a run down the left to get on the end of a ball from Downing but his cross was blocked by Sissoko. There was a bit of hope that West Ham would start to assert itself on the game.
Mike Williamson became the first player to go into Mike Dean’s little black book when he caught Jarvis with something that would have looked better on a dance floor than a football pitch. A sneaky little back heel as Jarvis tried to go past him. Not the booking we will all look back on, but noteworthy for how odd it was.
The 24th minute crystallized why we miss our injured strike tandem. Kouyate won the ball at midfield on pure power and fed Jarvis down the left. That is when Valencia and Sakho would be darting in and around the box like ants when you disturb their colony. Try to step on em, and all you get is dust. But Jarvis had nobody to pick out, nor did anybody try to get onto the end of his cross. It made the whole thing pointless, other than wasting time if you are trying to play for a nil-nil draw. In fact, neither team did all that much with the ball in the first thirty minutes. There were more errant passes than accurate ones, and I wondered if the first team to simply control the ball for a minute or so would score first.
One trait that will never go un-noticed or unappreciated by West Ham supporters is tenacity. If you put in a shift, if you work your socks off, we will never turn on you. If today was the last game ever for James Tomkins and Ginge, they would be immortalized. They both made so many world-class defensive plays that try as I will to include them all I will likely miss some. The first came in the 33rd minute when Sissoko and Perez combined again on a dangerous counter attack. Tomkins snuffed out what looked like a 1-0 Newcastle lead in the making with a great block on Perez. A few minutes later, after Noble fouled Sissoko and gave up a free kick in a dangerous area, Tomkins got his head on both the ball into the box and Carroll’s outstretched foot. A bit of treatment and he was back to work.
Perez continued his strong performance in the 38th minute when Ameobi fed the ball to him close to Adrian. If he had a better angle the ball could have caused problems, but his cheeky shot off the back of his foot went into the side netting. The next seven minutes plus one minute of added time were barely noteworthy, and it was nil-nil at halftime.
When I watch games to do these reports, I jot down notes on scrap paper and then do my best to construct decent sentences out of them afterwards. So little happened in the first half that I only used two pieces of paper as opposed to my normal four or five. The unfortunate fact was that with Andy Carroll playing alone, all we looked like was a slightly better version of last year’s team. To think that this formation can score more than a goal per game with any regularity is….wait for it…..deluded. Would Sam diagnose himself the way he tried to diagnose all of us a few years ago and put Zarate on? I hoped so, with Jarvis coming off despite the fact that he hadn’t played that badly. Maybe even better than Amalfitano in the first half. But given the choice I’d rather have the Frenchman.
The second half did not start with the substitution most us were hoping for, but at least it started with West Ham on the attack. Kouyate started a counter after some nervy moments in our own end and passed to Carroll. AC finally saw a pass of his end up on a teammate by the name of Stuart Downing on the left. When Downing put the ball on his right foot to cut inside, hopes of a shot on target rose. Then they were dashed when his shot went over the crossbar.
James Tomkins continued his co-Man Of The Match day in the 50th minute when he used the basic footballing principle of positioning when he forced Perez to lose the ball over the touchline for a goal kick. Nothing spectacular. Just excellent. A minute later West Ham were on the break when Collins cleared another Perez chance to Noble, who found Cresswell streaking down the left. Maybe it was youthful exuberance, but whatever it was made him hoof the ball into the crowd instead of finding a teammate in the box. He’s still learning, and a great student overall so all was forgiven.
Rob Elliot hadn’t done much wrong as Tim Krul’s stand in to this point. In the 54th minute, however, he showed how a split second of indecision by a keeper can cause problems. Elliot couldn’t handle a long ball into the box, and the ball was inched away from any West Ham player doing nothing more than toe poking it in for a 1-0 lead. Two corners followed, both with Carroll being out jumped, and Newcastle were left unscathed.
There is a cliché in American sport. “I’d rather be lucky than good”. It’s been attributed to Vernon Louis “Lefty” Gomez, who played baseball for the Yankees in the 1930’s. When the ball came to Downing on the left, I was talking to my mate Jon. We both could not understand why Sam was being so stubborn in not putting Zarate in. “We won’t score unless he does” I said. Just then, Kouyate got the ball from Downing at the edge of the area and attempted a shot. He missed. But the ball rolled slowly onto the path of an onrushing Cresswell, who showed the composure of a seasoned striker to put it behind Elliot.
West Ham 1, Newcastle 0.
It could have been 1-1 two minutes later when Williamson and Perez (yeah, him again) combined. Perez drove his shot right at Adrian, and with teammates running around the box he may have been better suited to try and find one. Thankfully for us, he didn’t.
The 63rd minute saw Newcastle make two changes. Tiote made way for Cisse, and Cabella replaced Gouffran. The TV cameras showed Pards having a word with Perez, seemingly telling him to play farther back now that Cisse was on. So it isn’t only Sam that tells his most effective and creative player to move away from the goal. That’s kind of comforting.
Still no Zarate, but Amalfitano made a case for himself being the one to come off if and when a change was made with a bad cross and a giveaway in Newcastle’s area. On the counter, Noble brought down Cabella and gave up a free kick. Oh god. How many times have we seen a free kick given up by Noble, even when it isn’t his fault, which leads to a goal. Were we going to see the latest edition of the script we all know? Luckily for West Ham, Haidara’s shot from the free kick went wide.
In the 70th minute, just like last week at Everton, the clubs official Twitter account announced that Zarate was ready to come on. I got the feeling that it was more than just information. It was the person in charge of those Tweets joining in on the call for such a creative force. Within seconds, Zarate forced a corner when he passed to Jenkinson. The Arsenal loanee saw his cross blocked out by Ameobi, but the question that I wanted answered was why it took so long to get Zarate on? A minute later, a ball into Carroll was headed into space which Zarate was running to. He didn’t get on the end of it, but at least he tried. Please tell me you saw that, Sam. Twice fooled, shame on you.
The 75th minute saw the most eventful thirty seconds of the match, and one of the more brainless displays by a professional footballer this season. First, with Newcastle attacking in numbers, Jenkinson played Sissoko perfectly to stop his progress. For that effort, he got a push in the back. And for that, Sissoko saw yellow. Thirty seconds later, a reckless challenge on Carroll in midfield earned him an upgrade from Yellow to Red. If Sam were his manager, he’d have been on his way to Siberia by now.
After being butchered last week, Amalfitano might have decided the best form of self defense is to attack. So he took Haidara down from behind and got booked. This is where some good ol fashioned West Ham paranoia crept in. Ten men, huh? Didn’t go so well against Spurs. Hull last year was no fun, either. Is this the crazy reason why we give up the equalizer?
The whole idea behind signing Zarate was to give Carroll a partner up front who was anything but like for like. We saw glimpses of that in the final ten minutes. First, Zarate fed a through ball for a running Carroll but it was just a bit heavy and went out for a goal kick. Then they got in each other’s way when they both went for a ball in midfield, allowing Newcastle to counter. Nothing happened. Then Zarate led another counter with a pass to Downing, whose cross was deflected out for a corner by Haidara. It was inches away from 2-0 a minute later when Jenkinson found Zarate on the left, who cut to the center and drilled a beautiful shot towards the top corner of the net. In his finest moment of the day, Elliot made a finger tip save to rob the Argentine-Chilean.
Nolan came on for Kouyate in the 85th minute in what could only have been based on Kouyate running out of fuel. Not that Nolan has any fuel to begin with.
Ameobi broke forward in the 89th minute, and despite being down to ten men Newcastle looked dangerous on this attack. My heart skipped a beat before Collins came to the rescue and took the ball away just outside the box.
In the second minute of the four added on, Zarate and Downing came close to making it 2-0. Zarate fed a rushing Downing on the left. Elliot came out to meet him, and Downing aimed for the far post. In real time it looked very, very close. On replay, it only looked kind of close. Still, who started it? The man named Mauro.
A final corner in the dying seconds of injury time gave the Toon army a reason to stand, but Collins and Tomkins told them to sit back down because the game was over.
Final score. West Ham 1, Newcastle 0.
We should all be happy for the three points. Considering our strong start to the season, two draws and a loss from our last three games felt like a letdown. Add the injuries and Newcastle’s fantastic form coming in, a loss would not have surprised anybody. So a mini crisis has thankfully been averted.
Or has it?
I’m not trying to bring us down here, but for the second consecutive game our most influential player was left on the bench at the start of the game. Why? When asked, I’m sure Sam will give not only an explanation as to why but also an explanation as to how he was 100% correct to do it. If he does do that, he will be alone in that thinking. It took great defending and a lucky bounce to get us the three points today. On another day, we may not be so lucky. And we have the players to avoid what we saw for long stretches of the game. I know it. You know it.
I only hope Sam knows it.