West Ham Proper

This quote, from a goal.com preview of players to watch for the coming season (then in Serie A), sheds quite a positive light on Diamanti’s potential…

A late bloomer, Diamanti has all the tools in his armoury to be the revelation of the 2009/10 season. The 26-year-old was one of the stars of Serie B last term during Livorno’s promotion, scoring a whole host of wondergoals. The pint-sized forward is skilful, nippy, creative and possesses a magic-wand of a left foot. Very dangerous from free kicks too, Diamanti could provide enough firepower along with Ciccio Tavano and Cristiano Lucarelli to keep the Tuscans afloat.

On the official site meanwhile, Zola describes the player thus…

“He is one of those players that is a classical No10. He is a very talented player and he can play in the hole. He can play one side or the other. He is an offensive player and very skilful. His speciality is free-kicks and he has a very good left foot. He is a good player, but where I play him I don’t yet know. I have some ideas but I am waiting to see how he will fit in the team.”

Sounds like Zola is keeping his options open – he will play on the left or right wing, or in the hole. Or at left back perhaps?

One thing he doesn’t sound like is a direct replacement for Carlton Cole, which makes me wonder if there is one more signing up our sleeves this week. The question still remains – if Cole gets injured, who plays in his place? It isn’t Diamanti, it isn’t Jimenez, it is unlikely to be Hines or Nouble, and it can’t be Ashton just yet. It’s a question that needs an answer before the end of next Tuesday.

So we’ve signed a striker. It’s not Chamakh, and it’s not Luca Toni, it’s not Eidur Gudjohnsen. It’s Alessandro Diamanti, a player with what seems like a fairly modest reputation from Livorno. I wonder what choice he was on Nani’s list this Summer – possibly 3rd or 4th choice, maybe 10th.

Duxbury’s words of wisdom on the official site don’t offer too much comfort – he thanks the club’s sponsors, presumably for stumping up some extra money at short notice to facilitate the transfer. Doesn’t sound like there’s much left for other signings then…

I always had mixed feelings about new strikers this Summer, simple because top-class ones don’t come cheap. And buying a mid-range striker would have seemed like defeat after letting Zamora and Harewood go in recent years. I was hoping that Ashton would be fit by now, along with Dyer, and that between them and the youngsters they could cover Cole for now. It hasn’t happened that way, and I concede that a new striker was an absolute necessity before the window closed.

Where strikers are super-important is when the team is in freefall I think – were we to lose Cole to long-term injury and begin to lose our way this season we would need someone to stand up and be counted, and youngsters like Hines and Nouble obviously aren’t ready yet for that responsibility. I remember Defoe being cruelly exposed when Kanoute and Di Canio were both injured in our last relegation year – that time we all lamented the fact that we hadn’t bought a willing Les Ferdinand in as cover that Summer.

I do think that the nature of strikers from the bench has changed in recent years. It used to be that a fit striker coming from the bench on 70 minutes was a potential game-changer and crucial component of any squad, but I think the overall fitness is so high in this league that those days have gone. Matches seem to be changed these days by tactical tinkering, not be simply bringing on a fresh pair of legs.

Daimanti, at 26, isn’t necessarily one for the future- if we’re buying a player at that age we need them to be close to the finished product. He has a rep for set-pieces – that’s good, as we have been playing with relatively gentle floated crosses from Noble and very little success from direct free-kicks for years now. But a player just-promoted to Serie A is not a proven performer by any means – in that respect the signing is a little disappointing. At least Savio has the potential for the future.

I’m trying to think of West Ham’s strategy here. Is Diamanti a major signing or a stop-gap? I favour the latter. I doubt he’s asking the Earth in wages, which seems to have been the major stumbling block for West Ham this Summer – presumable Neill, Gudjohnsen and Toni would all have made the move if the wages being offered were competitive enough. I suspect Diamanti was the cheapest available option from the reserve-signings list. I’m sure he wasn’t cheap, but unfortunately six or seven million simply doesn’t get you much in terms of strikers these days. But I have to say that it’s the sort of signing that the project was seemingly designed to avoid – we don’t want to be spending millions on expensive gambles who will be worth little or nothing if they don’t succeed.

It’s also a signing for mid-table, not beyond. Not that I expected any different, but there’s always hope that if Toni and Gudjohnsen had joined that we could really start to put pressure on those above us in the pecking order.

There is still the best part of a week for further signings though. I’m not expecting any more, but West Ham have surprised us before. We have a squad destined for mid-table, and now we have a bit more depth in the striking department. It’s all fine – move along, theres nothing else to see here…

Well I’m quite glad that I’ve missed the last two games totally. I was away in Kiev at the weekend and came back with a stomach bug which has laid me low, so I avoided the spectacle of last night as well.

Such a shame about the violence last night. I refuse to connect it in any way to the football, which apparently was well underway when the worst violence was occuring near the tube station. Yet as a football supporter I have to accept being labelled as part of a group who seem to enjoy a tribal, utterly mindless tear-up.

From the various bits of footage I have seen, the process of actually identifying who was involved in the violence shouldn’t be too difficult for the authorities. At least we can keep those people out of the ground. As a father who wants to take his daughter to matches, my stance is fairly clear – I want the violent louts who ruin the experience to fuck right off.

What is laughable is the opinion, frequently expressed, that football somehow ‘belongs’ to the idiots who made it their aim to invade the opposition end in matches throughout the 70s and 80s. Apparently those people represent the ordinary ‘working man’. What utter rubbish – those people only represent ignorant, thoughtless thugs. Football belongs to anyone who enjoys it, and those who look for violence clearly don’t. They don’t deserve it.

In terms of the matches, it sounds like Sunday was a creditable defeat to a very good Spurs side who may finally deliver on their top-four potential. The fact that Spurs are better than us at present should come as no surprise to anyone – they have invested so hugely in their squad over the last few years that genuine success is long overdue.

As for last night, it sounds as if Zola was experimenting heavily in an early round of the cup. He’s still tinkering with a 4-3-3 formation with ‘advanced wingers’ that has yet to bring any sort of success on the pitch. It’ll be back to the diamond formation for the next match, I have little doubt.

But we still won last night, and there are encouraging signs for our younger players. Hines got on the scoresheet, and Stanislas scored twice. Nouble and Payne got welcome first-team experience. These are positives to take forward.

All eyes on the transfer window over the next week though. Given the continuing uncertainty around Ashton there’s absolutely no doubt that we’ll be bringing in two forwards before the window closes, but will they be our top targets or our plan ‘F’ back-up signings? It may depend on outgoings.

But I hope whoever comes in that Zola doesn’t forget about our youngsters. A player like Hines will be glowing with confidence after the goal – he needs to be in and around the first-team, not frozen out in favour of a 30+ stop-gap forward. That’s the danger with these late signings – by filling out the squad you actually block the progress of those pushing at it from beneath.

That’s a terrific result on the face of it. Wolves would have been desperate to set out their stall in the top league, and it’s the sort of fixture we just seem to consistently struggle in. 2-0 puts us joint top of the league – amazingly there have been five away wins already today.

I can’t remember the last time we started a season by winning away from home.

It looks like we played the diamond in midfield again, and stuck Jimenez up front with Cole. Because we have players with good movement it can look pretty much like any formation you’d care to name – most seem to think we are playing 4-3-3.

I honestly don’t think opposition teams will know quite what to make of us – name Dyer, Noble, Collison and Jimenez in your team and they could quite literally be playing anywhere in the forward two thirds of the pitch. How do you set up your team to contain us? It’s not easy as it stands. I think it’s our best offensive weapon.

Some will say that we beat a poor Wolves side and that the result doesn’t indicate anything too much. I don’t agree – there are no poor sides in the Premiership. Many pundits seem to be tipping Wolves to survive this season. It’s a brilliant away result and the perfect start to our season – it is also free advertising to the players we are trying to persuade to join the club, and the players we are trying to keep.

And it’s a morale boost to Zola, our fans, and all the players. Huzzah.

Norwich have sacked Bryan Gunn after an opening-day defeat. After 20 years at the club. It’s a decision that kind of speaks for itself.

It sounds out a warning to any football club really – when it comes to success on the field, you are only as good as your last result.

Gianfranco Zola is currently being held up as all that is good in a football manager, but that can quickly change. The club came under some quite severe pressure, a lot of it from our own fans, when results weren’t going our way early in Zola’s reign. If we lost 7-1 to Wolves tomorrow, would Zola survive? He’d be under some severe pressure. Crazier things have happened.

This is my way of saying that although we look safe this season, it can all collapse very quickly with a bit of bad luck and a few poor results. It doesn’t take long for a promising season to switch into another probable relegation battle.

That said, I don’t think it will happen this season. The club has too much experience in its ranks, and frankly too much quality to really be genuine contenders for a relegation scrap. You never say never, but it’s extremely unlikely.

Can we push for a European spot? I really doubt it. And I think it’s a red herring anyway – it’s what you say to Upson to keep him at the club. It’s what you say to the fans to give the season the merest hint of significance. I don’t think it’s a genuine expectation – Villa, Spurs, Everton and Man City look a long way ahead of us.

I think it actually couldn’t be any clearer – we are the 9th best side in the division. And unfortunately I think we are closer to the Sunderlands and Fulhams of the division than we are to the Spurs and Aston Villas.

But I’m thinking long-term. We are in the business of developing a new structure to the squad, with gifted youngsters pushing for all positions, a production line of talent. We’re still seasons away from that becoming a reality. In the meantime we need to survive, and nurture the young players that we have. I think we can do that this season whether we are 7th or 17th.

There’s a fair bit of uncertainty about West Ham’s transfer targets at the moment. There are a number of rumours about comings and goings, but very little of an actual factual basis to go on.

This is exactly how it should be. West Ham don’t want to go publicising their targets, or discussing their budget or ambitions. Zola and the club should be playing down any reports of players leaving, or new players coming in – do anything different and the potential sale price may go down (because you look desperate), and the new player’s price potentially goes up (because you invite competition for your targets). It doesn’t suit the nervous types in the fanbase, many of whom seem to be having kittens at the prospect of the worst-case scenarios coming to pass.

I think this problem is slightly more acute this Summer. First of all, there’s not much doubt that the club is in a relatively shackled financial position. Duxbury has been fairly clear on that in his interviews. Secondly, the players that we appear to be going for are loan signings and cast-offs from bigger clubs – almost by design we are forced to wait for the bigger clubs to make their squad decisions, before they and the players involved know whether the move is on.

There is little definitive information so far. We know that Lucas Neill has held more talks with West Ham. We know about young Italian striker Mario Balotelli at Inter, because Zola is directly quoted hoping that the youngster would see that a move to West Ham would be in his interests. Eidur Gudjohnsen seems like a very probable target, but there is nothing definitive to base that on. Rumours about Brazilian winger Mancini seem to be longstanding and continuing. There is some speculation that we are trying to get Luca Toni from Bayern Munich, which would be a major coup even at his age.

The message I get is that West Ham are holding out for their top targets – the players who would definitely improve our first team. Whether West Ham are naively hanging on to pipe dreams, or stand a genuine chance of securing top names for the new season, I’m not sure. Zola has little genuine experience of the market, and I hope he isn’t just being wildly ambitious. On the other hand, maybe a bit of naivety is good here, because it makes you reach out for the ambitious targets rather than settling for second best.

At some point West Ham will go for their second-string targets – the players who perhaps might be classed as promising reserves rather than worldbeaters. It might be that West Ham hold out until the very end of the transfer window before they settle for these targets. In a way that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Imagine that Faubert gets a last chance to shine before a potential sale at the end of August – he might suddenly find his feet, or he might fail and make the sale a certainty. Either way, there’s some benefit to West Ham. Maybe Zavon Hines gets a chance to be Cole’s deputy and grabs it with both hands – we’ve suddenly gained a hot new prospect.

One thing is certain – none of us will be in a position to judge West Ham’s squad until the end of the transfer window. In early September our true potential, or lack of it, will be there for all to assess. Before then we are just guessing, and perhaps so is Zola : )

West Ham’s friendly victory against Beijing offered more clues about the coming season.

During the match, in the second half particularly, we began to find more of a pattern of play, which is very encouraging. Instead of using out-and-out wingers here, Zola gave Collison and Noble responsibility to watch the flanks, and played Dyer and Jiminez in more advanced central roles to support Carlton Cole. It wasn’t spectacular but we scraped a 2-0 win and looked better as the game went on.

One of the problems we have as a team, I think, is that we use Cole too often. He will show for the ball, and rather than build from the back and move forward as a unit, too often we just feed the ball forward and hope it will stick. Cole is a big powerful man and a key part of our team, and he will be crowded out in many games this season if we stick to this approach.

We are simply a much better team when we retain possession and work the ball.

Just as important perhaps, the fitness levels looked improved from the Tuesday to the Friday. There’s no magic way of judging just how fit we want the players to be at this stage – if they were over-stimulated now you might wonder if they might be tiring themselves out before the season has even started.

I am fairly convinced now that Zola wants to play with one up front this season. It will upset many fans, who think it is somehow a negative sign, but I think the truth is that if you look around this country and the World of football in general, the trend these days is to play only one out-and-out striker. Liverpool, Chelsea, Man Utd do it, and they are the best sides in the league. What is key to our progress is what we can get to fit behind the striker.

The most obvious choice is the diamond formation we used well last season – if we kept the same personnel, but stuck Jiminez in as a more withdrawn version of the Di Michele role, we would surely do pretty well. The main reason that I like this formation is that it’s a bit weird and disorientating for the opposition. But another good reason for doing it is that it gives Parker that role in front of the defence that he just seemed to absolutely thrive in last season – if he can recapture that form and stay fit, we could be a force.