Mind you, as the BBC site tells us,
"It's a phrase echoed by the founder of the Olympics, Baron Pierre de Coubertin, who said "The most important thing in the Olympic Games is not winning but taking part; the essential thing in life is not conquering but fighting well."
And there is the rub! To expect West Ham to "conquer" is like expecting the woman you marry to lose weight after she has smuggled the gold ring onto her finger, but we have a right at least to a team that is "fighting well". But this team hasn't fought for over 2 years. Fans blamed Zola, Grant and Upson but surely the one thing we would expect from an Allardyce team is blood and thunder?
I know it is only 4 games into the season and the level headed are saying it is too soon to panic but even Doctor Evil is talking about the "fear factor" at Upton Park. This team is psychologically scarred and is terrified of its own shadow. Allardyce has talked about the need to keep the ball, but you don't keep it by lumping it long and nor do you keep it by letting Parker have it. His ball retention is awful. I would love to see stats for his pass completion in the two home games so far!
The optimists will keep the faith - and good on them. But I am seriously worried. The performance against Leeds was utterly shambolic at times and we look no closer to finding a team shape that works than we did under Zola or Grant. I tell you what, the Claret and Blue Army revere Parker but we stopped playing when Di Michele left. Perhaps he was more important than any of us realised. We saw the poor goal return, we saw the tying of the laces, and what we overlooked was the way he linked the play from back to front. That hole that Di Michele sat in has been empty ever since. Nolan was meant to be the man to fill it but he has looked at mobile as Tristan and as fired up as a spent banger on November the sixth.
Is it fear or is it torpor or is it mental exhaustion? There's something very very very wrong!
Thanks for the warning. I got engaged last month. I will be buying a set of scales come the next payday!
ReplyDeletekevin in manchester..
ReplyDeleteThere's nothing very, very wrong- comparitively speaking we have had a decent start- we will overcome the UP hoodoo and do well but it will still be nip and tuck .. dig in sunshine.
Try to get a BOGOF deal mate. She will break the first set before she accepts she has to go on a diet. Good luck regardless!
ReplyDeleteHas Big Sam got Avram's blinkers on?
ReplyDeleteAccording to Sam we were unlucky not to win. We didn't take our chances and should have had two penalties, and were lax just that once when they got their second goal. The game I saw was a brilliant West Ham for the first ten minutes then it was Leeds cutting our defence to ribbons with clever midfield and forward play missing chance after chance including a penalty. The second half was just the same all Leeds and it was not a surprise when they equalised. Then their own goal was scored and this seemed to knock them back a bit and we came more into the game and did create quite a few chances and were unlucky not to score. However, Leeds picked themselves up and were all over us again and quite honestly played the better football and deserved to win.
I definitely saw a different game to Sam and that I find very worrying
Has anyone else had problems enrolling for the Academy membership?
ReplyDeleteAfter much prompting from the club me and my brother decided to renew our membership on line. Everything went through perfectly until the very end when we were expecting to receive a thank you we were told that our application had been rejected. We tried four times and on the fourth occasion our membership was accepted. Having since received a bank statement my brother who was paying, finds that he has been charged four times at £65.00 quid a time!!! To put matters right you can email the club and they promise to get back to you with an answer within 28 days or telephone them and be kept hanging on for ages at a charge of 10p a minute! If that happened to a few thousand people the club would have a tidy sum for a month or two, The whole matter stinks of racketeering.