West Ham's Relegation Down To Sheer Bad Luck!

Now calm down everybody. This is the first in a series of articles exploring why exactly we crashed out of the Premiership this season. I will look at different theories and explanations, some of which will overlap inevitably, and then try to tie all the threads together and reach a final conclusion. So, this is the Bad Luck argument.

Most would cite the injury to Hitzlspurger as the first cruel blow to strike West Ham and Avram, with that terrible injury ruling him out until February; and the loss of our summer marque signing was certainly a kick in the club's solar plexus. Pre season had gone so well and the club had found a winning groove, with Hitz, by all accounts, playing a prominent role. Amazingly, not only was he recalled to the Germany squad, he was named captain! A West Ham player captaining Germany! Boy had we landed a prime catch! And then...well we know what happened from there, and right on the eve of the season! Tell me, how many points would Blackpool have now if Adam had been absent until February?

And, of course, international duty was to strike again, ruling Parker out of key games after he won his belated call up for England. Did he stay on the pitch for too long, anxious about his England future if he made an early exit? He hasn't been the same player since and missed vital games against Villa, Blackburn and the bulk of the Wigan game. Nine points from those three games instead of one would have seen us safe. The Parker for England drum bangers amongst West Ham fans may just have cost us our place in the Premiership.

If we are looking for bad luck, we also have to cite the disallowed Piquionne goal at Wolves. Last kick of the match, literally, and three points were reduced to one, with Wolves gifted a point. Add an extra two points to our tally and take one off Wolves and we would still be down, but who knows what effect that win might have had on the morale of the team? Then, of course, there was the sending off of Piquionne at Everton for celebrating what we all hoped would be the winner. Two more points from that game and this weekend would still be interesting. And crucially there was the failure to send off Vidic at Upton Park when we were still two goals to the good. Three points there along with the confidence surge resulting from victory over the Champions elect, and I honestly don't think we would have gone down. There were other controversial decisions along the way, but those were three HUGE calls and all three were dreadful errors by the referees concerned.

But the worst luck we suffered, I would argue, happened off the pitch and before the season kicked off. What buggered us for the entire season was the fixture list. As soon as we saw an opening round of games that read Villa away, Bolton at home, Man Utd away and Chelsea at home, we knew we were in trouble, and to make matters worse, Villa parted company with O'Neill and the team went out to try to secure the job for a back room guy they loved. Yes Reid had a mare. Yes Green was hopeless. Yes the team selection was awful. But Villa hit us like a tsunami that day and only the very best would have avoided a pasting. And after that, who could see us getting anything from Bolton, Man Utd and Chelsea, our bogey team followed by the Premiership bully boys? Not many teams recover from a position of zero points from 4 games at the start of the season; the tone is set and you are in permanent catch up mode. And so it proved.

The truth is, we shafted Lady Luck remorselessly during the Great Escape (That goal at Blackburn, Big Sam leaving Bolton on the eve of our game with them, Arsenal missing fifty million chances at their place, Johnson limping off inside the first 15 minutes in our game against Everton and United banking the title before we played them in the last game of the season) and Lady Luck strapped on one of the Davids' toys and returned the compliment this year.

Avram didn't relegate us, Fate had our number and exacted pay back; and boy were we buggered!