The next two games may very well determine West Ham’s future for at least a few years. Anything less than at least one victory over Swansea or Sunderland will push us deep into relegation trouble. If relegation should come our way, it may very well alert “want to be” investors trying to buy a well credentialed football club at a bargain price? Two relegations in seven seasons might just be enough for our current owners to consider a decent offer? However, the bookies odds for us to drop suggest we will escape, although the prices are shortening with every defeat. Not many managers survive a five successive loss record nowadays and Slaven’s credit from last season plus the fact that the crowd still sings his name at games must be having a great influence on the trap door lever.
Our appalling injury record for many seasons now, acts like a ball and chain to our efforts. There are many theories to the cause and if anyone does come up with the answer they will be worth their weight in gold. This season, albeit for a couple of cameos, we have been without arguably our best striker in Diafra Sakho and we lost our only World class player (Payet) in extraordinary circumstances at the half way point. At present we are playing without our first choice centre backs, we have a left back who has lost all form and we don’t know who to play right back. Kouyate is a shadow of his former self, Noble has got slower and Adrian finally had too many brain snaps. The one player (Obiang) who looked most likely to win HOTY has been lost for the season and the two players we signed in January have mysteriously lost all the form they had been showing at their former clubs?
The fact is that even with all these excuses, we have been poor for just about the whole season. A few tantalising sprinklings of what may or could have been with wins over Palace, Boro and Saints have been overshadowed by a team that cannot defend, crumbles once it concedes and lacks any real consistency on any level. Throw in a move to the Olympic Stadium and all that is difficult has just been magnified. For me, the worst thing we could have ever done was qualify for the Europa League entering our first season at the new stadium, when the whole emphasis should have been on consolidation. Whilst the ritual of Thursday / Sunday games never really eventuated the whole process meant that our season was already on the wrong trajectory by buying in quantity when quality in just a few positions was all we needed. Last season should have been a platform for the club but the transfer policy actually just threw us back into Premiership mediocrity.
So, Swansea this weekend followed by Sunderland. If we can break the mould this weekend and bag three points everything will seem a lot rosier. This game, in my opinion, is the clubs biggest game since the play off final against Blackpool. Anything other than three points will make Sunderland and other future games this season even bigger. If we are put into a position where we need to beat Spurs and Liverpool at home to stay up I fear we are doomed. Swansea have only ten points away from home this season and have lost at Hull and Bournemouth in their last two – sound familiar? They have conceded even more goals than us and that includes us putting four past them in the reverse fixture. In fact Swansea are below us in the League table, the offense and defence table, the home and away table – in fact the only table they are ahead of us in is the form table which calculates points gained in the past 8 games only. The first half could be an edgy affair and that I am sure will put a dampener on the crowd. Swansea have only conceded six goals in the first 30 minutes of all away games whilst we have only scored four first half goals all season at home. And two of them were in the same match way back when we played Watford. In fact, out of our fifteen PL home games this season we have only been leading at half time once and that was thanks to a penalty 3 minutes into injury time against Burnley.
Good luck to all those going this weekend, especially StepneyPhil who has been a long term member of the site who is making his first visit to the new stadium. I will be in the same boat as him in a few weeks time with the visit of Spurs. The last thing I want is to be relying on points for safety in that game. Not sure my ticker could take it.
Finally, just to put a smile on the dial and remind everyone we are a very decent football club, I have attached a clip of Mabel’s 101st birthday surprise.