All hail this bright blue morning. We’re not out of the woods yet, but the victory against Chelsea last night has done wonders for all our senses of optimism. And let’s face it, being West Ham fans, we’re not exactly the most optimistic little flowers at the best of times.
I was broadcasting last night, so I only say the last six or seven minutes, but it is clear that although we ceded most of the possession to Chelsea, this was a different West Ham performance to the previous two games. And we won despite VAR, yet again. It still beggars belief that it took VAR three and a half minutes to rule out a perfectly good goal. And of course, being West Ham, in the next minute we conceded a penalty. I thought that would be it, but Soucek scored a goal which wasn’t disallowed right on the stroke of half time which sent us in with our heads held high.
When we went 2-1 up you just sensed it might be our night, with Antonio putting the cherry on the cake of a superb performance by him. But it wasn’t to be.
Chelsea then scored a superb free kick with Willian. 2-2 would still have been a creditable result, but with a minute to go, Declan Rice (at least I think it was) cleared the ball from the penalty area. But instead of hoofing it out, he found Antonio free on the left, He chested the ball down, then received it again, ran a few yards and then put Yarmolenko through on the right, who ran with the ball, cut inside and then struck it powerfully past Kepa straight into the net.
Cue a very loud ‘Yeeeeessss’ and a fist pump from me, causing the dogs to run out of the room in fright. And that was it. Fantastic feeling, wasn’t it?
When you look at the games Norwich, Villa and Bournemouth have – and Watford, to be fair, you’d have to say we’d have to play pretty badly to be in the bottom three at the end of the season. Bournemouth have the most difficult run of all of them.
We now have 30 points. It’s possible we could end up with more than 40 now.
Let’s for once, be optimistic, shall we?