West Ham Proper

Must say I’m gutted – we’ve been in the position in both matches this week to get points.

I thought we started the second half brighter than Bolton, and at 1-1 I really thought we would go on to win the game. That’s the most frustrating thing. The crucial goal was such a howler from an experienced player – it’s such a kick in the teeth.

This season, from quite early on, was always going to be about the club holding its nerve until the easy fixtures come along. But the confidence looks so fragile – I don’t know why we should be so nervous, after all there’s no shame losing to Man Utd and our form was pretty decent before then.

I have to say I just don’t agree with the teams that Zola is putting out. I don’t think we’ll get away with Diamanti on the wing – he’ll get found out and he scored playing more centrally in the second half today. He is desperately static though. Franco looks so isolated on his own up front – the team don’t know how to support him. Zola’s 4-5-1 or 4-3-3, although it seems more solid defensively, is really stifling to our forward play – I don’t think I’ve seen it really work for us ever over the last 15 months.

I want to support Zola, and its not his fault he is inexperienced – we all knew that before he came in the first place. But the longer this goes on the more the pressure will build – we will be desperate for some points by the new year, and what worries me is that the team already looks under pressure.

Plus points for me were Kovac, who I think is improving the more he plays. Diamanti’s goal, which was just wonderful play – it shows that if we can get possession in the right areas of the pitch we can create things.

More disappointment today. Another away match that ended up a fairly even affair, but unfortunately ended up in the opposition’s favour.

No excuses for our start to the match – I thought we were dreadful for the first 30 minutes. No fluency whatsoever, and no real idea about how we were going to break down the opposition. I could see that we were trying to tighten things up, and it wasn’t far off working, but I at least expect us to look tidy in possession. Which unfortunately wasn’t the case for much of the match.

The mitigating factor is Brum’s form, which is pretty spectacular. Unbeaten in 7 matches now. They look like a Premiership side no question. They’re on the sort of winning run that we could really do with. Soon.

On the bright side we had 14 shots on goal, and I can’t help feeling that we were a little unlucky. Diamanti had 3 or 4 shots whistle past the post, Dyer made a great run to hit the post, and Franco should really have finished his one-on-one. That said, we need to be doing more than nicking draws.

The thing I’m really concerned is the pressure that these away defeats are going to put on the key home matches. If we lose against Bolton and then Chelsea as well, it really makes Pompey on Boxing Day such a cup final fixture for us that we have to win. We just need a few unexpected points to take the pressure off a little bit.

It’s a period where the club, manager, players and fans have to keep our nerve.

There’s a lot being made of our defensive woes. And there’s not really much argument there – we are letting in too many goals at the moment. Statistically we are among the worst goal conceders in the Premiership, though on the bright side we are no worse than a gaggle of teams (Hull, Bolton, Blackburn, Burnley, Wolves, Wigan). I personally think our defence will improve, and it certainly can’t get much worse.

But on the bright side we are scoring at a better rate than in any season for a decade or so (I couldn’t be bothered to check further back).

We’ve scored 24 goals in 15 games. 1.6 goals per game.

The best competitor in recent history is the Hartson/Berkovic season when we were destroying teams at the Boleyn. That was 1.47 goals over the season.

I’m not trying to make excuses for a sluggish start to the season. But the goalscoring is a big plus. Particularly as many were criticising the club for not committing more attention to the attack in the Summer.

Looking at the form table might give us hope as well. We’re currently 12th in that, with a DWLDWL pattern. Considering we had a LDLLLD pattern earlier in the season I would say we’ve improved a hell of a lot of late in result terms. The current form (even after a 0-4 defeat at home) would see us sail clear of any relegation trouble were it to continue.

And the elephant in the room has always been the fixtures. We’ve played 7 of the likely top 8 at home, and we have a long run of home games in the new year that give us all the chance we need to push up the table (Pompey, Wolves, Blackburn, Birmingham, Hull, Bolton, Stoke, Sunderland, Wigan).

If you want to be an extreme optimist, you can find a good reason to see this season very much as business as usual. Looking at the actual fixtures played the only glaring missed opportunity is the draw at home to Fulham, and they were 7th last season so maybe that is an insult to them. If we were losing home games to relegation rivals there would be alarm bells. But we simply haven’t had the opportunity yet to really make any big mistakes.

I still feel fairly confident that by February we will be comfortably clear of the relegation fight. Chins up!