Missed the first kick though. I don't know what to say about that except under the circs we should be happy with a point. rwaeb, why bother the the goon board, I don't?
I'm having a turkey-shoot with a few dim gooners, over on the General Chat board. It's great fun! Their bitterness sours everything they write.
I just don't bother going over there, my other half does when I'm out and it's something I'm going to have to get her out of. She also goes on to the Chelsea board from time to time, she needs a slap.
Well we were pretty awful today so I'm very pleased we got a point. Our short passing was poor all day and rarely went to feet. When it did, the first touch was nearly always bad as well. I would hope it's just because the players have 1 eye on the final next week. How Lamela stayed on all game is beyond me - he was the worst culprit on my point above. Team criticisms aside, I thought the ref was poor and should have booked both Noble and Vertonghen (therefore sending Noble off) - though I suppose one could argue it evened up with a penalty decision that was a little soft. A good but lucky point gained.
Undoubtedly our poorest performance for a while. Rather surprised to some criticism of the referee, I thought he did ok today and on at least 2 occasions, refused to get conned by the West Ham dramatics. Two piss poor ogoals to concede and several of our players well off the pace. It was clearly their cup final as pretty much all their songs were about us rather than their own team. Cold inside the stadium, crap journey home in dreadful driving conditions, poor team display, chavvy Spammers. I have had better days.
On balance I’m happy because I said at the beginning of the year I wanted good football and exciting games, and we’ve done reasonably well on both counts, for the most part. Describing us as the most exciting team in the league is probably fair. We certainly weren’t great today, but I thought it was more West Ham pressing with a will than us playing badly. The big problem remains that we can’t stand prosperity. At Anfield we had been playing well but never looked like we believed in ourselves when the game was tied. The moment we gave up a goal we rediscovered self-belief, than lost it again when we scored. There’s been some progress made, at least compared to last year. We beat a couple of top teams and got to a Cup final. But we still need to learn how to clear the last hurdles.
Too many euro hangovers, we'll never get top 4 whilst we're in the mickey mouse Europa, we make too many changes to win it and it always effects our league form, sure I saw a stat that we've lost 4 and drawn 1 of 5 home games after Europa Im sure Everton feel the same, challenging for top 4 last season now in the bottom half, same happened to newcastle
It seems to me that we have, apart from our disastrous defensive capability, a very reasonable first team. The problem is that certain players, Eriksen, Chadli, Bentaleb, Kane particularly, do not have adequate replacements. They can't play every game with our schedule, and then we start to suffer.
It will feel like a loss to West Ham but it's scary how many individual errors are in that team at the minute. Completely outplayed United and Tottenham home and away with only 2 points to show for it.
Fat Sam on his way out with a grunt! Pardew next?Palace look as though its back to normal after the change of manager!
Pardew should quit the PL and go for a lower league. West Ham are looking at Slaven Bilic which sounds good to me. Well if I was Poch I'd be saying forget all about yesterday and concentrate on Thursday. Rest the players and choose the strongest team with two strikers to play which means NOT Adebayor.
It seems Fat Sam does not understand added time. The minutes shown on the board is the minimum time to beadded. West Ham wasted more time during the 5 minutes and Adrian took nearly a minute getting ready for the penalty. Moss rightly added this time on.
I'd be miffed if I was Bubbles supporter this morning, it was a close call for us. I'm not too concerned about this as London derbies produce some interesting results.
Not dodgy, just very clumsy and stupid. He's not put his hands out to push Kane he's put his hands out because he's already falling having tangled with Kane's legs, tripping them both. It's happened to Kane a number of times this season where a player has run into the back of him and taken him out, it's about time he started getting them given. He was certainly lucky that his poor penalty went straight back to him though. A draw was probably about right, their second should've been ruled out for offside but we were poor for much of the second half and Dembele was awful in the first half. Once again we were guilty of gifting chances at the back and we needed some luck with both our goals. Moss is a joke though, he always screws us over.
It's not like it's anything new either. You don't blow the whistle as soon as the added time is up if there's still a clear goalscoring opportunity. Wasn't there a Scottish ref that did just that a long time ago and blew the whistle as soon as the corner was taken(which was scored) and he got absolutely hammered for it for years to come. Really clutching at straws with that one. Hopefully Pochettino will respond in Van Gaal style to the diving accusations, you could make a long highlights reel of just Valencia diving and going to ground easily.
