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The HamburgHammer Column

Keep calm and stay away from the panic button!

Well, that was a bit of a crap weekend in football terms. Hugely entertaining, but ultimately crap nonetheless. Our game against Bournemouth had everything you could ask for as a football fan: Goals galore in glorious sunshine, twists and turns, penalties, a sending off, end to end stuff. But unfortunately also individual errors that would make a schoolboy blush with embarrassment, defensive prowess as you might expect to see on Hackney Marshes pitches and a home team that seemed to crumble under a mixture of too much expectation, a presumably easy opponent and a nervous disposition that is hard to explain considering how many games these players have been through in preseason.

Our team by now should be focussed, sharp and up to it, on Saturday they were all over the place. Once again we lost a game in the fist half, going into halftime with a two goal deficit. If you give yourself a mountain to climb in your home games you cannot complain afterwards if you end up empty handed. Our fullbacks’ confidence looked shot which is surprising as both Crewwell and Jenkinson were our most consistent performers last season.

Yet one must not forget that this will be a season of transition. New manager, new gameplan, new tactics and some new players. Talking of which our owners now need to take some responsibility and give the manager some more tools to work with (this is not me insulting potential new signings by the way!). We are terribly short on players.

As of now we have one fit striker in Maiga and apparently this is the man that everybody including our club hierarchy would love to sell (or give away) to any club which is willing to take the Malian and his reasonably high wages on board. I wasn’t happy with our result on Saturday and I obviously wasn’t thrilled with the defensive display.

Still I refuse to panic just yet, this season is a marathon, not a sprint. And I have to repeat what I said before: Bilic needs time to work with this team, build some chemistry, find his best eleven once injured players are available again and also rebuild the confidence of his players after a shaky start to the season.

We cannot afford to throw away our home games in the fashion we’ve done so far.

But all is not lost. I still believe there is quality in the side we already have and the owners will add to that quality because, well, they simply have to if you look at our net spend and what other clubs have been spending in this window already. I’m not sure if our lack of spending is due to having to balance our books prior to the OS move, but I don’t get it that we seem to have a list of striker targets and so far none of those has come off. Same with wingers. At the Premier League level you cannot afford the luxury to hesitate and dither. I understand our board will not want to pay over the odds.

Truth is: Sometimes you have to spend some serious money to fill a team need with the kind of player you want.

I expect a new signing or two over the course of this week. And as this is West Ham we are talking about I fully fancy us to have a good game now away at Anfield. Probably not quite the elusive win we’re all craving for, but a reaction from the team nonetheless. Randolph in goal fills me with confidence after his Bournemouth performance (weird to even write that considering he conceded four on the day), he will be fine filling in for Adrian.

What I don’t want to see anymore is Noble and Nolan in the same team as both are too slow for the Premier League level.

You can get by with one slow player in midfield, but not two.

Bilic will sort this out. He is a smart guy and had a great rapport at Besiktas with the players and the fans which is a vital trait to have for a manager, especially at West Ham.
If we are still seeing performances like the Bournemouth one in December I will start to worry. As of now I still have faith in Bilic’s ability to give us both good football and points on the board. I already love his frankness in interviews, him saying it like it is and taking the blame for mistakes on the chin.

This alone buys him a lot of goodwill from my side.

My own local team TSV Wandsbek Concordia (you remember, the lads from Hamburg’s EastEnd) lost their game yesterday in heartbreaking fashion conceding the 2:2 equaliser (after leading 2:0) in the second minute of injury time.

You can’t take anything for granted in football which keeps us coming back for more. West Ham will be fine this season, but we need to stay away from the panic button at this point. Which doesn’t mean, Mr.Sullivan and Mr.Gold, that you can take the foot off the gas in terms of making some more quality signings.

If you keep talking the talk, you need to back it up with some action from your wallets. Money alone doesn’t score goals but it does no harm either spending some.

Especially if you only have one fit striker.

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