Call it overconfidence, cockiness or disrespect to your opponent, sporting history is littered with cases where teams have thought that all they needed to do was show up and they’d breeze through.
Saturday evening was one of the lowest experiences that I’ve had as a West Ham fan. The chants from the faithful who attended the cup tie at Kingsmeadow said it all. “This is embarrassing!” repeatedly sung from the stands must have hurt to hear but, frankly, was a song that the players deserved.
Don’t get me wrong – it’s, almost certainly, hurting the players as much as it hurts us fans. Take Mark Noble, for example, and his chances of ever winning a major trophy with West Ham. He doesn’t have that many years left to his playing career so, if he’s ever going to achieve that, he’s going to need to do so very soon. I’ve used Mark Noble as an example because we all know how much he cares about the club. He must have been absolutely gutted after the final whistle went at AFC Wimbledon this weekend. Not only have so many of Nobes’ team-mates let us down – they’ve let each other down too. Not a single player among them can claim to have put everything in to the match. If they do think this then a good, long, cold and hard look needs to be taken in.
So how much of the historic loss is down to the players’ attitude. Wimbledon got off to an absolute flyer? Our players looked like they couldn’t quite believe what was happening as they were getting outworked, out-passed, out-tackled and, generally, outplayed by a team sitting fifty-eight places below them in English league football tier. For me the lion’s share of the blame has to fall on the shoulders of the team. You could, arguably, suggest that the team wasn’t prepared properly for the match and that should be placed at the manager’s door. Ultimately the boss will always be culpable but can anyone seriously argue that the team put out at the League 1 basement club shouldn’t have won? This is not a comparable embarrassment as that suffered in the Cup five years ago when Mr Allardyce exposed an inexperienced team to defeat like ‘lambs to the slaughter’. That particular occasion was almost the polar opposite of what happened two evenings ago, as I write, where the manager was almost completely to blame. This time, as the cameras switched to the West Ham bench, you could see the frustration on Manuel Pellegrini’s face. In an effort to turn the half time deficit around the gaffer made a triple substitution. Despite my position on fault-finding for the loss I found myself questioning the three simultaneous subs. During the period of time the team was adjusting to the changes we went three goals down – no co-incidence IMO. Truth is, however, that virtually all the damage was done in the first half.
The various reasons for the loss have been discussed at great length on this site and we’ll be talking about this black mark on our club’s history for decades to come. In my humble opinion I believe that an arrogant attitude is to blame more than any other single reason. For a few clubs the F.A. Cup is something of a holy grail. The majority of fans of clubs like Newcastle and West Ham place huge importance on the game’s oldest competition – and so they should. Unlike the League Cup the winners of the F.A. Cup are guaranteed automatic entry to the group stages of the Europa League. Criticise Europe’s second tier competition all you like but it has served as a form of progression towards the Champion’s League for teams – most notably that lot from N17. I know that all is not lost and, quite conceivably, the boys could qualify for Europe with a seventh placed finish but it’s not quite as exciting as winning a cup is it?
Sitting here writing I can hear the ‘One Show’ in the background. Very shortly the draw for the 5th round will be made. With Liverpool, Arsenal, Spuds and other Premier League teams out of the picture this year’s F.A. Cup is opening up nicely. So who would we have drawn (clearly you already know who we would have drawn) – here it comes……. and it is……… a home tie to…… Milwall! To top that one off Chelski are home to Manyoo – knocking out another of the remaining three of the top six!
All the best of luck to Wimbledon. If we were to go out to a lower league club then it could, certainly, have been worse.
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So onwards we go. Let’s hope we can get some, much needed, cheer against Wolves next. Sooner we put the debacle of the cup exit behind us the better.
COYI! West Ham 4 Seventh Place! ;)