West Ham Till I Die
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Zaman Siddiqui's Match Review

Yet another 4 goal home defeat

That is the only stat I am going to include in this post. This post is going to be quite different from the ones that I usually write. The reason being it was a dreadful loss that no one wants to think about. You would think we would do well against Liverpool given our win against Tottenham at the same venue – how wrong I was. Sorry that I was unable to write my match review the day after the league match, as I had an exam yesterday.

We have kept quite a few clean sheets recently so it is difficult to remember the previous matches in which we have conceded goals left, right, and centre. This is why I think the majority of people still back the manager. Had we ended the season poorly, support would’ve dwindled. This defensive problem that isn’t going to go away anytime soon. Almost all of us can probably remember at least three matches in which our defence has completely fell asleep. This is the likeliest reason why virtually everyone left around the 70th minute with even less sticking around for the lap of honour. Now, it is easy to suggest that they left because it was obvious that we were going to lose, but I sense a bit of unhappiness from the fans about the club’s direction (be it financial or managerial).

Delving deeper into this, there has been a lot of unrest on various issues this season. Many pundits and fans believe that Slav wasn’t given sufficient funds in the summer to purchase players or that the board has brought in players of their own choosing. Some social media outlets have said that Bilic doesn’t possess the tactical knowledge to be our manager. As you can tell, it is all very convoluted. Simply put, there is blame to be assigned by the huge majority of the fans.

Alternatively, the belief that the club has lost its traditional values is another. This mainly comes from the segment of fans who disapprove of the move to the London Stadium and instead opted for the expansion of the Boleyn Ground. Generally speaking, there is a lot of resentment that I feel isn’t being properly discussed about certain issues. One is the fact that the correct attendance is never accurate. In our game against Liverpool, we certainly weren’t 15 people short of the full capacity of 57,000. I’m sure this will be accounted for next season, but it certainly doesn’t improve the relationship between fans and the club for the time being.

This season, we managed to sell a lot of season tickets piggybacking off last season’s results. That and dare I say, the snake. We didn’t really need a marquee signing. Dimitri Payet scoring free kicks every now and then was good enough. Suffice to say some of our more expensive signings haven’t been playing particularly well. The club will be hoping that many fans renew their season tickets.


Stories in the tabloid newspapers stating that we are going to sign top players like Dries Mertens will only convince fans that the club is only interested in the club valuation and not if the fans value the club. This is something that can’t really be fixed. The club can’t react to every titbit online. I feel the solution is that fans (and netizens) need to take everything they read with a bit of caution. That and to not intrinsically blame the club for such sensationalist headlines, as they don’t have any control over them. We know all too well how common clickbait is. Sadly, summer is the season for trashy football journalism.

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