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Fatigued in Fulham - can Hammers bounce back against the Mancs ?

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I really don’t want to dwell too much on the Fulham game as such. It was a bit of an anti-climax all around, wasn’t it ? We can blame Moyes and his brilliant work so far this season for our sense of disappointment. The gaffer has been whetting our collective appetites for more scintillating and winning football in recent weeks. We quickly got used to West Ham finding ways to get all three points, even if we weren’t always at our best. Now we are miffed that our team only managed a draw at Fulham…

We certainly weren’t our usual confident self at Craven Cottage. Most of our players looked worn out and off the pace. Energy levels depleted.
Please recharge batteries ASAP their body language seemed to beg.

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Fulham, it has to be said, were fighting for their lives. They were a tough opponent, running, tackling, busting a gut as if there was no tomorrow.
If they do get relegated it won’t be for lack of effort. They actually looked more likely to score throughout the contest. So I prefer to be content with keeping another clean sheet in difficult conditions rather than being overly critical this Monday morning.

Another away point in the bag. Where I’m from a draw away from home is never to be sniffed at. It was one of those games where the cookie simply didn’t seem to crumble in our favour. West Ham didn’t get the rub of the green on the day. And not just in terms of the actual football…

Our players didn’t perform to their usual high standard and that applies pretty much to the entire team on the day. Application was fine, but there was precious little end product or quality in terms of build up play.
It happens. Maybe some players already had their minds on the upcoming FA Cup game, who knows ?

While we didn’t win, we also didn’t lose. We are bloody hard to beat these days and that’s something to be very pleased with. Mind you, I can’t say the same about Mike Dean and VAR official Lee Mason.

“The Dean&Mason Show“ sounds like an exciting Las Vegas attraction, with white tigers doing pirouettes on stage, women being sawn in half or a group of artists spinning 112 porcelain plates on long wooden sticks, perched on their heads, hands and feet while singing Dead or Alive’s Eighties classic “You spin me round“. Sounds like fun!

Unfortunately Dean and Mason are not doing magic tricks in the Nevada desert. They referee football games in England.

Which is no fun at all. Not anymore.

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The sending-off of Tomas Soucek was very harsh indeed. To put it mildly. It was a travesty really which is the slightly less mild way of putting it.
What I really want to write is: WTF ??? Is this where football is going ?
If it is, I’d rather start following dressage in future, it sounds more appealing and less biased at this point. Not as exciting maybe, but less controversial.

Soucek had never seen a red card in his professional career prior to this, he’s not that kind of player. He doesn’t seem to have a bad bone in his body, judging him on his time at West Ham so far.
He probably didn’t even nick his sister’s favourite toy as a kid to tease her.

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I didn’t see any intent from Soucek to hit out at Mitrovic at all. Mitrovic made the most of it, like unfortunately most players would these days.
It’s professional, it’s instinct, trying to gain an advantage anyway you can, innit ?

Acting like you had just been hit on the Loaf with a giant pipe wrench or cricket bat when in fact it was merely an accidental brush from the opponent’s elbow. Not a pleasant experience to have an elbow in your face, granted, but I’m sure Mitrovic will live to tell the tale…

Any young boy hitting the floor of the local playground in this fashion after similar contact would be laughed right out of the sandpit by his mates – and told not to forget his Hello Kitty shovel and bucket before buggering off home to mum for tea and biscuits.

You could see from Soucek’s instant reaction that he didn’t mean to even touch Mitrovic, he merely wanted to get his arm free, I reckon, to avoid any shenanigans for the impending free kick – but by doing just that somehow contact was initiated and the Fulham striker unsurprisingly made a proper three course meal of it, with salad on the side and a pint of bitter.

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But the referee still had a chance to do the right thing. Dean watched several replays, just like we all did. Apparently only an endless repeat of the split-second when Soucek’s elbow hit Mirovic’s face. Obviously you can’t tell if it was intentional from that split second, you need the two seconds before and after for context…

Still Dean went for glory and yet another moment of look-at-me-I’m-running-this-show fame for his personal collection. How he must have enjoyed it all! I can’t for the life of me understand how you can give a red card after seeing the replays. A yellow card for clumsiness, maybe, fair enough.

But this may now cost us Soucek for several games unless the card gets rescinded as it bloody well should! Apparently we can expect a decision, one way or another, as early as today. Tomorrow at the latest.
Indications are that Mike Dean has been told by his superiors at the PMGOL that he got it wrong, clearing the path for the card getting indeed rescinded and Soucek escaping a ban.

Still, I have been saying all along that the proof in the pudding for West Ham will come once injuries and suspensions to key players start to happen. This could have been one of those situations. We have nobody in the squad who can replace Soucek like for like.

This would require Moyes to think on his feet and find an alternative.
It would likely have to be Noble, Fornals or even Balbuena or Diop.

Whatever the decision might be, it’d have an impact on Rice’s performances as well. The chemistry between Rice and Soucek would be difficult if not impossible to recreate. But it’s a potential dilemma we have brought upon ourselves, we’ve ordered this particular bowl of broth, now we gotta finish it as ordered. We didn’t sign a DM in January and we also didn’t sign a striker.

So what happens if Antonio got injured again, doing his hamstrings ?
“A striker, a striker, my kingdom for a striker!“ as a certain Mr.Shakespeare might have put it…

As much as Moyes might prefer to work with a small squad – this will be his challenge now whenever a player becomes unavailable. You can’t predict that a referee is going to strike with an unfortunate call or when a player might go down with an impact- or fatigue-related injury, but you gotta be prepared for the possibility it can and will likely happen to your team at some point in time.

We took the gamble, we decided to play with fire and we might get our fingers burned as a result. Tough. But not surprising.

Still no penalty for West Ham all season, but now a truly questionable/embarrassing sending-off to our detriment.
This is much more like the old West Ham!
I had almost forgotten what it feels like…

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Talking of feelings – it’s still lockdown here in Germany. And it will be with us Krauts for a while longer, until Easter at least by the looks of it. On top of that the coming days will bring heavy snowstorms and dropping temperatures to my neck of the woods. It’ll be so cold that cats all over Hamburg will be happily retreating into their human tin openers’ fridge just to warm themselves up for a while. The forecast is predicting snow galore and we are still advised to stay at home as much as possible.

Oh, and my brother still hasn’t heard back from his doctor about how and when his next phase of therapy is likely to go ahead. Not the news I wanted to hear. Let’s say I am not looking forward to the next seven days with any kind of joy or excitement.

A healthy dose of joy though arrived on Saturday by way of our dear friend BSB who called me up unexpectedly on the old dog and bone, so we could chat away for 45 minutes, mainly about West Ham of course. It was really lovely to hear my favourite cabby’s voice again – but don’t forget that due to the lockdown situation and no trips to Blighty for me in a while, I haven’t actually been speaking English to anyone for over a year now. (Muttering to myself on matchdays during our games doesn’t count!)
Typing away on a keyboard is one thing, but chewing the fat on the phone is a different matter altogether.

I’m pleased to say though that after an initial phase of struggling for words and phrases, the conversation began to flow along nicely, like West Ham’s attacking play throughout our great January run of games.
I gotta give thanks to BSB for this chinwag.
It may not sound like much, this simple phone call, but sometimes little gestures like this one mean a lot. It certainly gave my mood a proper lift. Cheers for that, me old mucker!

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No rest for the wicked though, another game tomorrow, FA Cup duty away at Old Trafford. A free hit as far as I am concerned. Most people would still expect Man United to win this fairly comfortably. With our league position we really have nothing to lose here and winning the Cup would not only be a bloody nice achievement in itself and give us a beautiful trophy to parade, it may also be a more likely route to European football for West Ham than final league position.

I am reasonably confident. We weren’t really firing on all cylinders against Fulham and somehow I can’t see a Moyes team having two subpar performances in a row.

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I know it’s Manchester United, I know they’re a bloody good team and they are “at home”. Still, the number of games surely is having an impact on their squad too. Pogba might be out for them after leaving their game at the weekend with an injury. And their 3:3 draw against Everton with the visitors scoring a very dramatic late equaliser, might have knocked their confidence a bit as well.

Anything can happen tomorrow and I for one will be watching full of hope and, yes, expectation. Again, that’s what Moyes has done – he has raised our expectation levels in terms of what this team can achieve against all the odds. We will see a strong starting XI (under the circumstances) and surely Michail Antonio, if he starts, is due another goal eventually.
Or two! ;-))

With Lingard out for this one, I would expect Fornals or Lanzini getting the nod. Time to grab your opportunity with both feet, lads! Get us into the quarter-final round so we can be look forward to blowing some more bubbles this season!

With a bit of luck and common sense prevailing, even Soucek might be allowed to play at Old Trafford…

COYI

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Hamburg football update; Pretty good weekend for the two Hamburg outfits. Hamburger SV got a point away at East German team Erzgebirge Aue, sharing the spoils in a wild 3:3 draw (after being 3:1 up at half-time). With their fiercest promotion rival Bochum winning their fixture, the gap has narrowed again with HSV still on top with Bochum right on their heels and only two points behind.

The St.Pauli boys maintained their impressive run of form, beating Sandhausen 2:1. That’s an impressive four wins out of five now, getting them into 14th place with a cushion of four points between them and the relegation playoff place. Nice to see both Hamburg clubs doing reasonably well again!

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