West Ham Proper

I’ve come to love the silly season of the Summer. In the old days supporters used to simply enjoy watching their team perform on the pitch, and hoped for good luck in the transfer market – these days it seems that everyone who follows football is an expert on the way the transfer market works, what our financial position is, where the squad might be weak etc. It’s as much a part of football as anything we see on the pitch.

West Ham are wise to be tight-lipped about their budget – I never understand clubs that parade their budget in front of the media, as if advertising to agents and clubs exactly how greedy they can be with their demands. Zola has said there is money to spend if needed. Nani has said that there is not silly money to spend. These are guarded, cautious statements that I just don’t know how to quantify. What is a modest transfer budget in Premiership terms these days – £15 million?

Where West Ham are in a great position compared to other clubs is that we know we don’t absolutely have to spend. We could retain the same squad for next season and I’m pretty sure that barring a disaster we will be in mid-table once again next year. I don’t think the same applies to many teams around us – the likes of Wigan, Fulham and Stoke will all be acutely aware that they will have to dig deep again to even retain their positions.

But surely we accept that mid-table is pretty much the height of our expectations at the moment – we are looking to develop steadily, rather than punt our future on any silly gambles. We could go out and spend £100 million this Summer and we’ll still be nowhere near the top 4 in terms of squad quality. We want to steadily start putting pressure on Everton, Spurs and Villa, but we just can’t have any genuine expectation of overtaking them however much we spend. They will be spending too, and their squads are already that bit better than ours.

The opportunity is there to once more invest in youth – we can afford to bring in players to develop for the years to come. Our competitors are looking for dependable Premiership performers, and that market will be expensive both in transfer fees and wages – going there is unnecessary and short-sighted. We don’t absolutely need to plug any gaps in our squad.

There’s a lot of talk about bringing in established strikers this Summer as a priority – I totally disagree. We have Dyer and Ashton coming back from injury, Savio may be expected to play up front in the long term and we also already have a fairly reliable first-team starter in Carlton Cole. We don’t need established strikers at all, we need to speculate on cheap strikers and hope to bring one through. Sears will be on loan for some of next season but will look to be involved next year. I wouldn’t be surprised if we simply settle for another year of Di Michele and ignore the expensive striker market totally. Who knows – a young player like Bajner may be ready for promotion to the first team next year.

Where I would like to see us focus is on young full-backs – I think it’s been a weakness of ours for a while. Neill has a couple of years left at most, and may start being used more in the centre of defence. Ilunga has no recognised deputy at the moment. Spector is a versatile player but he still hasn’t nailed down a position – I wouldn’t be surprised if he ends up playing in midfield. Now is the time to invest in the replacements for our full-backs and give them a year or two to settle into the club and the league before taking up the reins. We can also afford to give ourselves stylistic options at full-back – an attacking alternative to Neill is a great idea on paper, but Faubert struggled with the role. Let’s buy a young player with pace and a good engine and encourage them to watch Ashley Cole (football) videos – they can be protected enough in the current squad to learn on the job.

As usual the twists and turns will surprise us, but I don’t see any reason not to be enthusiastic about our Summer and our future. As long as it’s sunny, the rest won’t matter all that much.

I was reading about ‘regression to the mean’ in Ben Goldacre’s Bad Science book. Stay with me. This is the idea that a lot of phenomena observed in the area of medicine are wrongly ascribed. For example, if you have a cold and have lots of baths in your own collected urine, and then you get better, you might well decide that bathing in your own urine is what cured you. What really happened is that you got better from your cold, as people almost always do, but you misread what you did as affecting this change.

It got me thinking about the curse of the Manager Of The Month award, given each month to one of the best-performing managers in the league. It is often noted that upon being given the award, many managers go on to precide over noticably worse form of their clubs. I don’t think anyone believes this is a genuine curse of the witchcraft variety. But I think most people probably justify this belief with some cod psychology – being given the award makes managers and players over-confident, and they take their foot off the pedal. Or maybe it motivates their opposition to play better against them. Or adds to the pressure on a team to justify the award. Or something like that.

It is much better explained by ‘regression to the mean’. If a manager is given an award for his team outperforming their usual standard of achievement, there is actually much less capacity for them to improve on that, and it may be unlikely that they can even maintain that. It is much more likely that they will regress to the mean, ie slip back towards their established average of performance or even dip below it. So it’s not a curse, it’s a natural feature of the way that averages work.

If a team could maintain their above-average performance for good, it would become their new average, ironically making them less likely to receive a manager of the month award for it. Have I lost you yet?

I recently heard a fact that Manchester United hadn’t lost two games in a row for a great many years , the inference being that they are extremely good at bouncing back from a defeat. There are lots of implied thoughts here – they are strong in character, the manager is a great motivator, they have passion above the normal, etc. All may be true.

But it is much better explained by regression to the mean. Man Utd play below average one week, perhaps as badly as they can possibly play. What are the odds that they will play better the next week? Very high indeed. The fact is that Manchester United win most matches that they play. The odds that they will win virtually any match are very high indeed, even before you consider what their average may be.

Have you ever noticed how lucky or unlucky fans are always infrequent ones. You know those fans who, when they go to a match, the team always loses. They’re a bad luck charm. Other ones who come to only the odd match, but whenever they do West Ham win. My daughter is one of these – she has come to one match, where we beat Sunderland by two goals to nil.

For some strange reason, when these lucky or unlucky fans become regular visitors, they seem to lose their magic touch. Their affect on results seems to strangely change to match the average performance of the team. Funny that.

And I’ve got this strange idea that if I switch allegiance to Manchester United overnight, I may suddenly find my magic touch, and my team might start winning more when I go to see them. But I would also become a glory-hunting twat, so it’s all swings and roundabouts really.

A bit of a personal question, but it’s a question that you only ask if you’re not really sure. For West Ham fans it’s a bit of a pre-occupation. With our club I mean, rather than the size of our genitalia. Although…

As Axman noted in a comment yesterday, West Ham are now the 10th biggest point-earners since the Premiership started. Not bad, if you consider the ups and downs of the club over the last few years. But for many West Ham fans, a top-ten finish in the toughest league in the World is perceived as a failure.

In terms of the size of the club, measured by revenues, West Ham seem to regularly reside somewhere in the lower reaches of the top 25 in the World. Ahead of clubs like Villa, Everton and Rangers, but obviously behind the big clubs, and the more financially successful of the pretenders (Spurs, Newcastle etc).  Not that revenues necessarily mean all that much – clubs are generally saddled with all sorts of debt. But it just feels about right that we’d be about 25th in the world.

There was some confusion over a recent article linking us with Brazilian midfielder Harnanes, who plays for Sao Paolo. The article read “English giants West Ham United are reported to be in South America…” which caused some mirth over at the WHO. But compared to Sao Paolo, we are giants. No club in South America is as cash rich as West Ham.

It’s so easy to forget that size is relative to where you are standing, and what you are comparing to. Compare us to Portuguese giants (and Champions League winners) Porto – we are bigger. Compare us to Dutch giants Ajax (or PSV) and we are bigger. Compare us to the big four in England and we are smaller.

So have some pride. We can’t all be Dion Dublin.

Here’s an article I posted yesterday on West Ham Online…

West Ham have made giant strides this season, and we should be immensely proud of our club. A top-10 finish in the toughest league in the world is assured whatever the result next week. Given the changes at the club, and the financial shenanigans off it, it is an incredible result on the pitch. I have loved watching the side play football this year, and haven’t really been disappointed by a single performance (NOTE: Repliers below have mentioned Boro in the cup, and that was poor I agree). Job done.

I feel we’ve been extremely lucky with our managers. Curbishley, still completely under-rated, transformed the squad into a mean outfit capable of consistency and results. And now Zola has inherited that solid base and added a genuinely progressive philosophy that could carry us to heights on the pitch that Curbishley could probably never have managed.

I say we’ve been lucky, but really we have to pay credit to those in charge of the club, whose appointments have been absolutely top notch. Curbishley proved a brilliant appointment, but Zola looks like a totally inspired choice at the moment. And the ‘Nani’ factor has been sensational as well – the technical director has picked out some incredible gems over the last 12 months. Ilunga and Behrami have been nothing short of sensational finds.

Zola has got somewhere near the very best out of this group of players. Parker, Upson, Green and Neill, the ‘known quantities’ if you like, have been in excellent form under Zola. The developing players like Cole, Noble and Spector all seem to have continued their steady improvement. And the new players, Behrami and Ilunga, seem to have adapted to the Premiership very well. Even the old stagers like Boa Morte, Tristan and Di Michele, have been utilised to do a job when needed.

It’s worth underlining the incredible amount of change that has gone on with the playing staff. Zamora, Ferdinand, McCartney, Mullins, Bellamy and Etherington have all departed – these were not bad players, and in some cases very good ones, but in many cases the loss has simply been absorbed by clever work in the transfer market, and more importantly the promotion of young players into the first-team squad. I do think that under a different manager we might have struggled, but Zola has coped with all this manfully, never looked under pressure, never complained to the press or panicked in the transfer market. He has simply taken the players he has been given and worked hard to get the best out of them.

It’s worth underlining the key principle that the club are working with. We cannot compete in resources with the top clubs, so we must generate resources by developing young players. Arsenal have done it successfully, and now we are doing it. It’s worth always keeping that in mind – for example those disappointed with Savio’s lack of minutes on the pitch should remember that in the long-term we should/could reap the benefits for buying a talented youngster rather than a middling established player. And Zola has proven he’s the man to develop these young players.

Zola’s team goes out on the pitch and knows exactly how they want to play – I don’t think I’ve seen that sort of unified sense of purpose on the pitch for the decade I’ve been writing about West Ham. We know that the ball will largely be kept on the floor, and worked creatively to develop that possession into dangerous forward areas. And we know when the ball is lost the outfield players will be busting a gut to get back into position to defend from the front. The philosophy is simple, but it’s another thing to actually see it work consistently on the pitch.

And Zola’s style finally starts to take advantage of our greatest strength as a club – the influx of technically-trained young players. A player like Collison was never asked to be positionally astute, or to use physical strength to batter opponents, or be responsible for marking opponent X – he was told to go out and play, to receive and pass the ball, to feel his way into Premiership football.

And I am 100% sure Collison would never have made it under Redknapp, Roeder, Pardew or Curbishley. If he’d ever got his chance under those managers it would have been in a pressurised situation covering for an injured player, shackled in a central-midfield role where his lack of experience would have shown, and where he could never get to show his actual ability. Under Zola his ability has shone through – it’s been a joy to warch him play the game, and for a couple of months at the turn of the year he was easily our best player.

And I thought I was excited about Collison’s ability, but James Tomkins looks like a genuine world-class talent in defence. I just feel he has been perfectly developed – technically sound (as every Tony Carr graduate is), physically strong, and given the opportunity through loan spells and canny stewardship from Zola to learn his position. He already looks like he can dominate a striker from that position – he’s becoming pro-active in dealing with his opponent, and is improving game by game. I just don’t know how much more you could want from a young defender at that age.

I think Tomkins would have come through regardless, but there are others on the fringes of the first-team who are being utilised very well by Zola. The jury will always be out on young players like Stanislas or Sears, simply because they don’t have the obvious pace or skill of a Walcott or a Rooney. But I think Zola has proven that there’s still no reason that these players can’t be developed into useful members of a Premiership squad. Why fill out the squad with reserves or loan signings, when the young players are proving that they can do a decent job when called upon?

The development of these young players has added an extra shine to the campaign – though in result-terms we have stood still, as a club we have progressed. What more could we hope for from this season?

This week I communicated with a friend I haven’t seen for 17 years on Facebook. It was a weird feeling.

Danny Gabbidon must feel similarly towards a football – he has resumed training this week.

Apparently Zola has said “He is looking forward to next season, which is good“. Nice to know. So am I.

Last Summer I earmarked Gabbidon as a potential sale, but I don’t suppose he has any actual value now after being out for so long. Here’s hoping he can continue his progress and play a proper part for us next season – he’s a pacy alternative at the back, although I’ve always thought he was suspect in the air.

As you can see, the club are taking no chances with Dean Ashton’s rehabilitation from injury. And to think that Curbishley scoffed at the use of the Bacta-tank!

I thought we did okay at Everton.

We were a goal up and looking fairly comfortable when Cahill skipped through and was brought down by Tomkins. It was a clear penalty though I suppose you could say that there was an element of the swan dive about Cahill’s fall. I’ve always thought there was a skill to winning a penalty, and it’s a grey area between outright cheating and making sure that a mis-timed challenge is properly punished. The red card was unfortunate though – Tomkins is slightly unlucky that there aren’t more defenders nearby to give the ref the option of producing the yellow, and to be honest if we were the home side there’s just no way it would be a red.

Even with 10 men, and after gifting Everton goals, we looked capable of creating chances, as we have for most of the season. A beautiful defence-splitting pass from Cole set up Boa Morte for a shockingly tame effort, and Cole himself had a good chance if he’d controlled the ball better in the area. And we looked dangerous from set-pieces too, with Upson going close.

But Everton are a good side – no shame in losing to them. You have to hand it to David Moyes – he and his staff have a knack of turning ordinary players into very good ones, and it’s a skill I hope Zola also has. Players like Pienaar, Baines, Hibbert and Osman don’t have much in terms of physical presence or genuine pace, but their technique is so good it makes up for any weaknesses. Man for man I don’t think Everton are that far ahead of West Ham as an outfit though, and if the wind blows fair next season perhaps we will give them more of a fight for 6th place.

What I like about West Ham this year is that you get a reasonable base level of performance from us – most Everton fans would leave that game with a grudging respect for the way we played. Obviously it’d be better if we could turn these performances into results, but on another day there’d be no penalty and no sending off and we might have won that game.

So West Ham are out of the race for a European place after defeat at Everton. Mainland Europe breathes a sigh of relief I suppose.

It’s still a solid top-half finish though – plenty to be proud of. With the financial shenanigans off the pitch, and the sweeping changes of the playing and coaching staff over the last 12 months, it’s definitely a result.