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The Taming of the Shrewd

I had the weirdest dream last weekend: The Boleyn was rocking, we were playing Chelsea and we were winning that game 2:1, with a cracking piledriver of a shot from Zarate and a beautifully directed header into the top corner from Carroll. The fans couldn’t stop singing the Achy Breaky Dmitri Payet ditty. But the fun didn’t stop there as Chelsea lost the plot, on and off the pitch, getting Matic sent off for two clear bookable offences in short succession. The Sulky One too was sent off giving him the opportunity to watch the second half from the comfort of West Ham’s Executives’ Box while his assistant had already been ordered to leave the dugout minutes before that. Maybe their kit manager and bus driver were sent off too, but as with most dreams you don’t quite remember everything once your are awake again.

Hang on, what are you saying ? This is exactly what happened in your dream too? Must quickly check teletext then and, WOW, indeed: This really happened, another big scalp added to Bilic’s belt of honour which he never wears in public as he’s too modest and well-mannered to boast with his successes. Now, does anyone remember the (early) start of our season ?

Let me give you a hint: Europa League qualification stages won through fair play procedure ? Some lovely games against opposition from Malta, Andorra and RoHammer’s home country ? With some refereeing performances tthrown in that would make Graham Poll shudder with embarrassment?

From being the good boys in the first row of the local parish church we seemingly had morphed into snotty schoolyard bullies, getting players sent off left, right and center.
It wasn’t a question of if but when. Sakho, Tomkins and Collins, all getting private and early use of the shower facilities during our European adventures. Then in the league Adrian got himself sent off for kicking an opponent in the guts by accident while keeping his eyes peeled on the ball only. And Noble got his marching orders for a perfectly fine tackle at the edge of the box which later got rightfully rescinded.

While some of those sendings off were harsh or even unjustified they all showed only too clear how you make it hard for your team to get anything out of games when you give yourself a mountain to climb by not keeping your emotions in check and allow yourself to react to opponents getting in your face or by going into rash challenges.

What a difference a few weeks of training under a good manager seem to be making. Our team has wised up, we do play incredibly smart now and with the new way we play things have turned around for us in the most amazing way – it is now the opoonents who more often than not fail to stop our players and have to resort to holding, shirt grabbing and kicking ankles instead. We are far too pacy and flexible now to be stopped by legal means. We play with a swagger and with confidence.

Make no mistake. Those sendings off against Sunderland, Palace and Chelsea will be followed by more. Which team in this league has the kind of squad that is capable of dealing with guys like Payet, Lanzini, Kouyate, Moses (or Zarate) and Sakho running at them for 90 minutes ? And even if you do happen to deal with them on a good day you may find yourself confronted with some downright frightening substitutions coming into the game from the bench. Do you really breathe a sigh of relief as a defender when you see Kouyate, Moses and Sakho being replaced by Obiang, Zarate and Carroll ? Or Valencia ? With Song (and don’t forget O’Brien!) about to return from injury we become even more of a surprise package. How much more unpredictable can you possibly get ?

Teams simply cannot be sure these days how exactly West Ham will hit them, who will step up to the plate. But hit them we do and we will continue to do so. Opponents will get overrun and bypassed time and time again, frustration and anger will simmer until coming to a boil leading to self-implosion finally. If tippy-tappy passing football doesn’t work we can switch things around and take a more direct approach if need be. We have plan A of course. But also plan B, C and D by the looks of it.

If there is one thing though that needs to be addressed it is our application while playing with a man advantage. You cannot afford to give space and ball possession to a team (especially a quality one like Chelsea) when you have a man advantage, just sitting back, inviting pressure to build. That’s asking for unnecessary trouble.
We also need to learn how to take games to the opposition and push their parked bus to the hard shoulder in order to get through and score. There simply will be games we won’t be able to win by counter attacking.
Some games may require us to win by making the best of having the majority of the ball, putting a team under the kosh and scoring against tightly-knit defensive formations.

But if this season has taught me one thing so far it is that Bilic is a good observer and learner. He soaks up information, processes it and deals with any shortcomings he sees.
He appears to have nailed our disciplinary issues from earlier in the season, he’s set up a pretty effective counter-attacking stye. I’m pretty confident he can sort out our gameplan too when we have the majority of ball possession against so-called lesser opposition.

Let’s hope both Bilic and our team stay shrewd and smart, this wiould go a long way in keeping us in and around the top six. COYI!

PS. Thanks for those asking about my screwdriver injury. I play around with a screwdriver in my hands when watching games trying to ease tension (which rarely works). In celebrating Carroll’s winning goal I cut one of my fingers and drew blood. But I will still use the srewdriver ritual as it has served us well this season so far, hasn’t it ? It also seems to work for my predictor where I managed the maximum number of points for the Chelsea game. Needless to say that this was probably more down to sheer bloody luck than the magic of my screwdriver…

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