No funny puns this time. No jocular remarks about sending Woolwich Wanderers packing. This feels terrible.
Look, I know it’s Arsenal. We never do well against them results wise. Moyes in his career has never done well against them. But we raced into a 3:0 lead quickly against an Arsenal side that was looking woeful.
West Ham have a history of crazy games, topsy-turvy stuff galore.
Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. Grabbing equalisers from the jaws of defeat.
Well, we shouldn’t really have, but we have done a Tottenham against Arsenal. 3:0 up and cruising. After the final whistle, just one point and maybe lucky to still have that.
I really don’t feel like posting much after this game because frankly I feel devastated, shocked, drained, defeated. From the highest heights to the pit of what feels like defeat.
For the neutral this game had absolutely EVERYTHING, plenty of attacking football, chances galore, controversy, own goals, the lot.
But I am not a neutral supporter, my team is West Ham and so I simply do not understand HOW we let this slip.
Even when we scored the third goal I didn’t see much of a celebration from the lads (I initially thought this would be ruled out for offside, the players looked so dejected). Did they think at that point “Sorted! Another three points, thank you very much!” ? Because almost immediately after our third goal we seemed to switch gears in the wrong direction.
After that it was basically all Arsenal.
We hardly ever saw the ball again. Referee Moss didn’t help with his weird handling of this game, some of his calls made me think he was refereeing a separate game elsewhere. But I don’t blame the referee for our complete capitulation after taking a three goal lead.
I also didn’t quite compute why there was no West Ham player on the pitch to get into the faces of their teammates (at least I didn’t see that) and get them back into competitive mode.
Once again, it’s a sign of progress we are all moping and moaning about only winning a point against Arsenal. But let’s face it: This was a very different Arsenal side. We are a very different West Ham team. And we had a 3:0 lead. That we let this slip shows we are not the all-conquering football force some of us might see in us already.
We need to learn from this how to cope with the rare situation when we have this kind of lead and the majority of possession. We need to learn to be smart, more professional, more focussed – for the entire game.
Special praise in this game (I know) has to go to Issa Diop – when he was clearing that ball from the line early in the second half I thought that was a game-winning moment for us.
Diop was pretty good throughout, but what can you do when you score two goals for the opposition yourself ?
This one is really hard to take – now I know what it must feel like for those Spurs fans, going through a range of emotions all in the same game.
European football is still very much on for us, but like all of us I would have preferred to go into the international break on the back of another crucial win.
This has deflated my West Ham balloon somewhat, I’m not gonna lie to you.
Coupled with the fact that lockdown has just been extended here in Hamburg and some rather disappointing news that my brother is in hospital again due to side effects suffered from his latest round of therapy a couple of weeks ago, I cannot claim to be a happy Hammer right now.
My birthday is coming up over the Easter weekend and once again a proper birthday do with friends in a bar or restaurant is out of the question. Let’s hope something else will come up soon to put some spring into our collective step again. COYI!!!
Hamburg football update: Hugely successful weekend for both major Hamburg clubs. Hamburg SV won 2:0 against Heidenheim to reclaim top spot in the table. Whereas St.Pauli secured yet another away win, 2:1 at Osnabrück. Leaving the team from the red light district bang in the middle of proceedings: Too far away from the promotion spaces, yet with also a solid cushion against any lingering relegation worries.