I thought the hoof thing was a quasi myth, but my god did they know how to lump it up to Carroll, who was absolutely woeful, despite being very impressive in the air. I thought they defended well, and Collins in particular really surprised me, he looked quite impressive. Bit of a hot and cold performance from us, Lallana looked great early on, then disappeared; Ramirez flittered in and out, but his set pieces were consistently poor. Rodriguez was fantastic when he came on, looked such a threat.
All joking aside, Trixter, and I know we've all been taking the mickey, to and fro, this season but, how long have you been putting up with that kind of football..? I know it's effective, and fair play to WHU, but you seriously must be wishing for another Ron Greenwood, surely..? From the amount of game time I was able to watch today, I haven't seen such a match that was so physical and devoid of playing passing football. Seriously, it would put me off. Best of good fortune for the rest of the season - one place below us, of course.
Allardyce - "I thought we looked comfortable." 11 shots on target including a Lambert effort that was clawed off the line doesn't quite chime to that.
Of course the conditions had much to do with how the game went, blaming Rambo for those free kicks is a bit harsh, you could tell what he was trying to do but his back foot was slipping and sadly nobody else was on the right wavelength, nothing that a bit more practice won't sort out. Clyne was my m o m too, I thought he was imense today. Hoover took one in the face early doors which a decent Referee would have seen. Foxy was steady enough, got skinned a couple of times, but took a lot of knocks for the team that would have damaged Luke had he been there, and didn't complain, I thought his booking was harsh too, will have to see that one again. Not the win that we really desired but not losing was important, especially as the other results were favourable.
A game that didn't suit us though we made a lot of chances, but few good ones. Was impressed with WH...a strong side...can see why they are midtable. We seriously missed Shaw...very little seemed to happen down the left...we needed his bursting runs. JRod looked lively when he came on. Ramirez got his goal, though some shots/crosses were wayward. Was impressed with some of his defending...he was determined and tracked back well. A game that was important not to lose, so result was okay especially as other results went our way. A horrid wet day...frozen...and had a wet seat. This may have affected my judgement.
Allardyce's definition of comfortable doesn't chime with mine then. There were two teams out on that pitch today. One was playing football, some of which was a joy to watch, and the other had their backs to the wall, on numerous occasions. As I said before though... they're effective. But the style isn't pretty. It's actually quite strange because I don't remember Allardyce's Bolton Wanderers team being that bad to watch. He's taken a leaf out of Pulis's Stoke City book since, in my opinion.
His Bolton team was sometimes that bad, the only times it wasn't quite that bad, were when players who were actually entertaining like Okocha were able to get involved.
Thought Fox was okay today. He's capable of doing us a solid job, but sadly lacks Shaw's adventurousness. This is a position we must do something about...we won't always have the same player fit.
Hmm...I have to admit I kind of stuck up for West Ham a little before the match as what I had seen of them this year hadn't been that bad, I was wrong. Total anti-football from start to finish, the irony was that when they got it down and tried to play on about 2 occasions they didn't look too bad. Allardyce is a total cancer on proper football, they need to fling him in the summer. Nolan...what can you say...total C**t, that is all.
I suppose you play to your strengths...they made our players look small...an optical illusion I'm sure. When we signed Lambo, we could have gone the long ball route, but that was never Cortese's intention. The wet pitch didn't help either.
West Ham fans are in danger of actually liking Allardyce's brand of football. Many of their fans today seemed to have big chips on their shoulders, think they are "norty" and acted like Bullys. So much like their team & manager. Was the sort of game that we so often come away with no points, so all things considered, a draw was alright. A drier pitch and I think we could have thrashed them today.
No indeed, but Fox could still turn out to be a useful left-sided utility player. He's a half-decent LB [OK, not PL quality, but just about alright in an emergency], and he could be a half-decent LM. How long has his contract to go..?
From the minutes I was able to see [about 40, all told] I thought that when we played with the ball, we passed it through them effectively. It tended to be that final pass that things went astray. WHU played so sodding deep, with two banks of four, playing into their own penalty area, at times, that it got quite messy for that final pass. That's something we can learn from, so today wasn't a failure by any means, but I'm still disappointed not to have all the points because clearly Saints were the better team. Things often don't happen that way though. Disappointed but proud today, because we upheld what was good about the game of football.
As discussed yesterday, our style can make good teams, such as Chelsea, City etc, play long ball, but they fail because it isn't their natural game. we just collect the ball and pass up the park again. West Ham were always going to be tricky, because they do play long ball.
I'm really starting to believe that JRod might be our best player, when he came on he absolutely tore them apart, despite being ill. He didn't even warm up before the game.
Pogatetz did make Fox look like Philip Lahm though I'm sure he was grateful no one else really ran at him after his booking.
True. But we looked solid at the back until Tomkins went off. Pog coming on and Rodriguez coming on was always going to be a problem for us. I commented to my mate that "Pogatetz is gonna cost us this game". God help us if he starts against Man Utd in the week!
