Never in doubt! (Only joking, my fellow Hammers!)
Blimey, that game has turned the colour of parts of my barnet a grayer shade of pale although personally I prefer to call that hue silver chalice.
A game packed with incidents and heart-stopping moments galore.
I can’t remember a game where I have shouted more expletives and naughty English and German words at the screen than this one.
Usually I’m fairly docile thanks to my matchday screwdriver routine.
It didn’t work this time.
I was properly cream-crackered at the final whistle, I can tell you that!
By all accounts we should have probably lost that game. We usually do.
We have now probably used up all good luck we were due for the remainder of the season, we shall see.
So, how did we do it ?
Watkins sent a penalty kick (after an unnecessary shirt tug by Rice in the box) onto the crossbar. His injury time equalizer got chalked off by VAR due to an eyelash borderline offside position, another of those really tight ones, too close to call really.
It gave us plenty of post-game moaning about VAR from the Scouse llama, Jamie Carragher, and his irritating whiney voice.
On the replay Watkins looked marginally offside, but we have seen other similar cases where the goal was then given anyway.
Make no mistake: The way we won this game is how big teams like Liverpool, Chelsea or Man City win a lot of their games when they’re not really at the races.
With a healthy dose of good fortune. Ours usually likes to go into hiding.
So much so that we put that fact into our club anthem.
Villa had won every away game in the league this season. Onto West Ham away then for Villa. We all know what usually happens with a stat like this, we tend to help opponents out to keep runs going. Or starting one.
But we won!
Let us talk about Peter Bankes for a minute (I’m sure Bankes is rhyming slang for something!). He happened to be our referee on the night and he basically blew his whistle whenever a Villa player hit the deck while West Ham probably got two free kicks all game. Mr.Bankes apparently is a Merseysider (why am I not surprised ?) and I figured that Villa must have promised him a lift back home (or at least the first bit up to a service station near Birmingham). That might explain why his calls were so lopsided.
When I was trying to gather some information on the guy, doing my research online, I found his Wikipedia entry which must have been tampered with by a football fan with serious hacking skills and similar experiences of Bankes refereeing games with Aston Villa getting the majority of calls as it read:
“Peter Bankes is a rookie football referee. He was brought up as an Aston Villa fan from a young age. He officiates many games for Aston Villa in the EFL Championship.”
I know it shouldn’t really, but it made me chuckle. Great sense of humour!
The game was also bizarre because West Ham scored early on in both halves. And after both goals we almost immediately handed the initiative, ball and momentum over to Villa for large portions of the game.
66% possession for Villa tell part of the story, six shots on goal another.
West Ham chipped in with 34% possession and only 2 shots on goal.
Both bulged the Villa net though and last time I looked that’s still what counts in football.
“Only Fools And Horses” is one of my favourite British go-to comedy staples and most of you will have seen the episode alluded to in my headline. The christmas special where Trigger gets awarded a medal for saving the community money by using the same broom for 20 years, sweeping the roads of Peckham. While his broom by his own admission had gone through 17 new heads and 14 new handles in this time, he still maintains it’s the same broom and proudly provides proof of the fact by way of a photo…LOL
The name of that episode obviously worked well for the pun in my headline as we had played the Villans, with West Ham as the obvious but ever so fortunate heroes. But it is also fitting because David Moyes really used the heads and handles at his disposal quite well in this game.
He was certainly making the most of the heads of Ogbonna and Bowen quite literally…
I thought both Masuaku and Antonio had off-days in the first half (Antonio didn’t really look match fit yet). Several other players though weren’t quite their usual reliable self, Soucek, Rice and Cresswell (by their standards) didn’t pull up many trees either.
So I was impressed when Moyes put Benrahma and Haller on for the start of the second half (very early by Moyes’s standards) and both didn’t waste much time (28 seconds to be precise) to have an impact with our second goal, with Benrahma providing a peach of an assist for Bowen to steer a masterful header into the corner with Haller providing back up to nod it in just in case Bowen might not get to the ball after all.
We also saw the return of Mr.West Ham, Mark Noble for a little cameo.
Which was good to see. We remained under the cosh though, Nobes couldn’t really help that.
As in the first half, after our second goal it was all hands on deck again and Villa were running rings around us at times. That’s where my bilingual swearing came in handy. Maybe I’m lucky Mr.Bankes doesn’t understand German, otherwise I might have been red-carded with a lengthy stadium ban thrown in for good measure…LOL
I don’t know exactly how we managed to get all three points out of this one, but we did get the win. It’s nigh on impossible to keep Grealish quiet or on both feet throughout 97 minutes, but we did a reasonably good job with it.
I suppose that’s where it’s paying off for us that Moyes has been given the opportunity to play the same back three/back five for several games running now.
Chemistry seems to help a lot with winning points. Even more so when you have experienced chaps like Messrs Coufal, Balbuena, Ogbonna and Cresswell protecting your goal.
What a weird name for a British security firm though…;-))
Let’s not forget to give Ogbonna some praise for an absolute monster of a header that gave us a very early 1:0 lead. It must be fun to play for West Ham these days.
But it’s probably less fun for the gaffer to pick the starting XI for our next game on Saturday against Manchester United.
The Red Devils for sure haven’t started the season the way they would have wanted to. But their most recent come-from-behind win at Southampton has shown that you must never ever underestimate that team, take anything for granted or take your foot off the gas after taking a lead.
Manchester United have gone on a similar run like us, winning their last three league fixtures. It promises to be a tight encounter, this one…
It’s rare for West Ham to sit in 5th place in the Premier League.
And Manchester United are always a tricky customer. But they are certainly no longer as invincible as they used to be. And we tend to raise our game in this particular fixture for one reason or another.
As the above picture shows Antonio and Haller have successfully played together in the past already. I am confident, no, I am 100% certain that they will enjoy being on the pitch together, harrassing opposing defenders.
I’m not saying that the upcoming game is the ideal foil for that combination. But I would love to see Moyes finding a way to unleash both of them on PL rivals in the near future.
Maybe in a front three of Benrahma, Haller and Antonio against certain opponents.
I’m typing my final words as the clock strikes midnight in Hamburg. The witching hour has begun…I have to admit I’m really impressed how West Ham have managed to ghost their way up the PL table, especially considering that they had to negotiate the toughest list of opening fixtures of any team in the league this season. Long may it continue!
COYI!!!