I'm with you on this. Even if we did get relegated, there's still next season and the one after that. The only time I've been genuinely fearful about the future of the club was during administration in 2009. Is skipping through old fart managers, playing crap football and finishing lower-mid-table really that satisfying? I'd argue not very. I say we should keep entertaining, aspiring to be the best and seeing where it gets us.
After the 5 years West Ham have had, 2 or 3 boring years of mid table and solid performances are fine by me. You play some pretty stuff, but look where you are. It's all very well if you are actually good at it, but sometimes you just have to swallow your pride and just get a result. If you or us go down, it is going to be very tough to come back. Leeds are about to be taken over, qpr may well be down. Then you have Ipswich with mick in charge. Bolton, palace, Blackburn, Leicester. I wouldn't like to be competing with that lot for promotion and I'm glad we came up in the season we did. Yes West Ham vs stoke might not be one for the purists. But that doesn't mean it will be a boring game. And another thing. Neither of us of us are gonna in the bottom 3 come May.
We're in the Premier League because like West Ham or anyone else in the league, we've earnt the right to be there. Nothing is guaranteed in football and sticking to your primciples is probably more productive in the long run. Being in the league is nice, but it's not worth selling your soul for.
Selling our soul? How dramatic. If temporarily abandoning our traditional flowing game is going to establish us in the league for a few seasons then that is fine with me. Playing the game on the floor doesn't make you morally superior my friend. The aim of the game is to get the ball in the goal more often than your opponent. There is no rule that says you get any extra reward for more passes or less long balls. I disagree about sticking with principles being better in the long run. I think it is important to adapt and do what is needed to be competitive. Allardyce has instilled a very determined and resolute mentality in our side and he has got our defence organised and made us very difficult to beat. In a few years, a more attacking manager just has to come in and do the easy part and add the flair to an already strong team. There is very little point in going toe to toe with teams like man city/arsenal/man utd. Man City's starting lineup yesterday cost around 180m to assemble. We are not going to out pass them or outplay them so we contain them and stifle them and we grab a very important point. It is easy to say "I would rather go down and play the game the right way", but if you do and next season doesn't go to plan early on, I think you would think differently with hindsight.
I agree with Trixter completely. West Ham are not exactly a boring team. They are playing to their own strengths and it works for them. You can't begrudge them that. We seem to be caught up in this belief that Saints are a beautiful attacking team that can play our opponents off the park and that in itself is a weakness because we are not good enough yet. We need to build a solid foundation and improve and grow as a team based on picking up a few ugly wins (as Fran mentions). Saints are historically an entertaining team, not just an attacking one. I used to love watching the 1-0 wins against the big clubs. We need to learn and adapt to each and every game. When we can do that, the free flowing football will come. We're also caught up in this notion that we don't need to beat the top sides to stay up which is a load of rubbish. We need to learn from teams like Norwich, West Ham and Wigan. They are winning games on paper they probably should not be. It only works if we beat all the sides around us but we've already lost to Wigan and West Ham. We're bottom of the table now and that's not what I want from Southampton FC. Not after spending £30m. Cortese will want more. We need to start being a bit more clever and I'm sure we will.
I didn't say anything about moral superiority. I'll renew my season ticket regardless of which league we're in, as I'm sure many of us on here would, so going down wouldn't bother me much in the scheme of things. For the money I'm paying, I'd rather see us play with some panache. There is life outside the PL and one appreciates football so much more when one gets their head round that
For what it's worth, I'd be happy to see us able to stifle a game and close the opposition out when it makes sense to do so. But I don't expect to see that this season. We need to be adventurous because the only way we're going to get any points with the current team is to score more than once a game.
That's fine but we are not outscoring the opposition so something has to change. We are not Arsenal ! We can be adventurous and organised at the same time. We have also seen that we can play counter attacking football and be successful. (Leeds away last year is a prime example). As I said, we need to be more cleverer about how we approach a game. we will not win by playing like Barcelona because we are not good enough!
I've got no problem changing our style if the result is that we win matches. A win is a win, however it was achieved. My point is that if we're not winning matches, then I at least want to be entertained. Right now, I can't see that would be the case if I were supporting Sunderland or Stoke. They're not winning games, and the facts and stats certainly don't point towards excitement. I'd rather be 5th place in the Championship thanks.
"We need to win games" is your typical Dave Merrington philosophy, not far removed from "what we don't want to do now is concede a goal" - a lot easier said than done and a statement that offers no tactical insight. Crap football can lose games as well as win them and at the end of the day, the best way is the way that works for you. For us, that's fluid fotball and trying to play Fat Sam Ball would just be painful.
Agreed. One of the things that gets lost is the fact that defensively-oriented football is no more a guarantor of success than attacking football...and may indeed make survival more difficult, if you don't have the proper personnel. No one (outside Newcastle) was talking about Sunderland as potential relegation fodder, but owing to their difficulty winning games they're near the bottom of the table, despite being tied for the second-best goals against total in the Prem. West Ham got the players necessary to make that style work; Stoke have done extremely well in matching talent to tactics. But it ain't for everyone, and therein lies the problem with the "play that way for a year or two to get established, then switch gears" thought: there's considerable inertia in the construction of a team, such that it's not terribly easy to go from a space-clogging ball-hoofing club to a free-flowing attack-minded group overnight, nor the reverse, especially at the Premiership level. Really, the only time one sees it happening is when the team is on the downswing...which is a surefire indication that the previous style wasn't working.
All very well. But is it working for you anymore? If Allardyce was your manager with the same squad you have now, where do you think you would be?
I didn't say it would be over night. But in 2-3 years when Allardyce calls it a day and someone else comes in (Gold and Sullivan know the fans will demand a more stylish manager next time around) I would expect to see a fairly quick change in style over the course of a season or so. There are plenty of good footballers at West Ham capable of playing slick passing football which we already do at times. Noble, Collison, Vaz Te, Jarvis, Nolan, Diame, Benayoun. All of these could adapt the teams game very quickly and very easily if a manager asked them to.
Maybe not. But you did mention "selling our soul" to maintain our premier league status, suggesting that we have taken the easy route to staying up, rather than doing things the proper way. Wow your last sentence was patronising! I agree the Premier League isn't everything. I thoroughly enjoyed last season in the championship. But you have worked so hard to get back there and I think it would be a real shame for your club to give it up so easily.
As long as teams avoid cheating routinely, there is no right or wrong way to win. I like entertaining football, but at the moment would settle for winning football. I'm sure I would find Saints winning 1.0 by a long ball to Lambert highly entertaining.
