Allow me first of all to wish everyone at WHTID, readers, lurkers, posters, contributors and authors alike a Merry Christmas and some days filled with peace and joy surrounded by friends and family members. May Santa treat you all kindly this year!
As the big day in German Christmas festivities is indeed December 24th (which is today) it means that by the time you’re reading this I may already be on my way to my brother’s house to assist with some final preparations before we will all go to the afternoon church service, to be followed by the moderate exchange of some presents and what promises to be the traditional feast of goose, red cabbage and potatoes/dumplings with gravy, with baked apples and custard for afters.
Christmas of course could have started early with a fifth win in a row against Watford, but it wasn’t to be. This time it was us wasting numerous goalscoring opportunities, hitting the woodwork (which is actually plastic these days, innit ?), the grass or thin air, everything but the back of the net while Watford ended up being the more clinical side on the day, greedily taking all points with them from Stratford to their neck of the woods.
Maybe it’s because I’m looking forward to Christmas a lot, but I won’t be allowing myself to get overly frustrated about this defeat. Yes, I was on the edge of my armchair for almost the entire game, my screwdriver was going into overdrive as time was ticking away and we still couldn’t put one over the line. It was a highly entertaining game, intense, end to end stuff, terrific pace – a great advert for the Premier League. But West Ham lost, not just one of our best defenders to injury but also the game as a whole.
You won’t find me jumping for joy obviously, but I will gladly put this game into perspective. Watford are indeed a much better side than I was prepared to give them credit for before kick off. I will never join the Hamburg branch of the Troy Deeney fanclub, neither in this life nor the next, but they worked incredibly hard for this and as a football fan I simply have to doff my cap to them. Overall I felt we deserved a point, but then again they scored and we didn’t, so one cannot exactly insist upon Watford not deserving the three points.
Before the game I didn’t know too much about Watford, other than there is the Elton John link of course – even people with only a passing interest in football know that!
But I wasn’t aware that Watford had so many nicknames: The Hornets, The Golden Boys, The ‘Orns and probably a few more. They also have an elk’s head on their crest. Or is it a moose or deer ?
Maybe it’s a local thing – we at West Ham have our (cursed) badgers, they have immigrants of the deer variety from Scandinavia apparently. ..;-))
At least it makes their crest quite original and unique that way…
The great thing about Christmas, at least in England, is the fact that it is a very busy time football-wise. So rather than dwelling on the Watford defeat, our boys can nibble on their christmas puddings before taking the pitch again and making amends straight away. I am quite optimistic for a variety of reasons.
For once we seem to be a team this season that is quite good at bouncing back. The players will have hated that defeat against Watford, so they will be very much up for the next game, albeit against a born again Southampton side who will be tricky to play against, them having a new spring in their step after the arrival of Mr.Little-Hut-of-Hares.
We should have some of the injured players back for that one, Arnautovic could feature if things go well in training, Perez could be back too. I somehow don’t see us shooting blanks in two consecutive games, so fingers crossed we shall go back to winning ways soon. I have treated myself this Christmas and booked flights for the upcoming game against Newcastle which will still fall into the pre-Brexit period.
But that is still quite a few weeks away, I must dash as I have an appointment with a crispy leg of goose with dumplings and red cabbage. I hope my next column will be about a great performance and yet another win for the might Hammers again! Enjoy the festive season and thanks for reading! COYI!!!
Hamburg football update: St.Pauli won again, so they are really making a bit of a statement here in terms of promotion to the Bundesliga proper at the end of the season. Long may it continue. Hamburg SV hit a bump in the road, losing away in the northern derby at Holstein Kiel.
The next Concordia highlight will be the traditional local Indoor Tournament with ten teams from East Hamburg competing against each other on January 6th. As a special treat (and also a more useful present as a pair of socks or a voucher for a clothes shop) my brother and my nephew will join me for that event, so it should be another thing to look forward to. Concordia have won the previous two tournaments, so I’m hoping for three in a row.