Well! It's not for the lack of trying is it? A lot of shots, of which the vast majority on target but we are badly lacking some clinical finishing.
very untidy football too much of the time, better footbal played by wroxham!!!! just joking woxham play much much better
West Ham were there for the taking...last season's Norwich under Lambert would have had them buried by half time! Discuss... <notawumpost>
Well, a point and a clean sheet isn't to be sniffed at, but to me it's still 2 points dropped. Disappointing 2nd half, Howson and Johnson weren't as influential as the first half, and West Ham seemed to have much more space to attack into than we ever did. If Vaz Te could hit a half decent cross then I think we'd have struggled to keep a clean sheet. I thought Simeon coming off was the wrong call, he looked much more lively than Holt did, and agree that we needed a midfield spark.
Hard to argue with any of that. The tempo in the first half, along with some lovely subtle through balls to Jackson were excellent, just a shame Jacko was off-side every time.
Disagree, welly. West Ham were well organised and they won the tactical battle in the sense that the second half was played in the air, not on the ground. I thought the first half had some pretty nice football but the second was like watching Wimbledon of old. Can't blame West Ham - they were playing to their strengths. We were poor for most of the second half after the brief flurry at the start. Sounds like you don't agree with this, but I think we're looking stronger in general than last season. The problem is that the league is also looking a lot stronger and I can see who eventually goes down being a matter of a bit of luck going the wrong way. And at the moment we are not getting ANY luck at all (with a bit of luck, we could have 9 points by now). On that topic, why do we NEVER get 50-50 penalties, but they are ALWAYS given against us? I thought it was a cast-iron penalty when I saw it in real time, but when you saw the replay, it looked like the ref may have been right in that the contact happened very slightly outside the box, but not many refs would have been eagle-eyed enough to see that at actual speed. A very hard run of games now. It would have been nice to have more points in the bag. On the other hand, I think Hughton is transforming us and making us a stronger overall force. I'm getting worried about Holt, though - he has not looked good at all this season. I know he always starts slowly, but we need him firing pretty damn quickly.
I can't be bothered to google it, but I take from your reply there wasn't any? But nevertheless I wasn't talking about "any team", I was talking about this west ham team today...you should have won, and I believe last season's Norwich would have beaten this lot you faced today... Of course I could be wrong!
Bit disappointed that in the last 3 games we've had 3 decent performances and the feeling that we could/should have won. As a result we've got 3 points from a potential 9 if we had taken the risk and brought on wes against QPR or West Ham today could we have won one of the those 2... I think so. I think we've got to take the game to teams and giving wes a run out we could have nicked all the points in either/both. So why not take the risk? After all who dares wins
If Holt was up and running on all cylinders then maybe we would have won (only maybe). He is a notoriously slow starter as we all know but I do not recall him having so few chances before in the opening 4 games. I can remember just 1 shot on target from him since the season started. Am I worried? Perhaps a little. I really do need to be convinced we have a player and team that can score goals regularly enough.
Still early days, for what it's worth I think that come the end of the season you've got enough about you to be safe from relegation!
Obviously I hope you are right Welly. What I have seen, in the last 3 games, is that we do have a team capable of competing and by that I mean we can keep the opponents out. Quite a bit has been said by a couple of ITFC fans on here about CH's negative tactics but I have not seen evidence of that other than in the Fulham game. We have played 4-4-2 for the last 3 games and have looked pretty comfortable most of the time but I have to repeat, we need goals to really get some confidence going again.
20 shots (according to the beeb) and no goals, Holt not looking like his best. Newcastle, Liverpool, Chelsea and Arsenal coming up. Still, i'm staying positive. Bassong and Barnett look a good partnership with Turner and Bennett to come in if needed. Garrido is good, Ruddy is solid. Snodgrass and Howson will play better than today and we still have Fox, E. Bennett and Hoolahan to come in if necessary. It needs a couple of players to score and our first win and then I think confidence will grow and things will be ok.
Arsenal are spanking the Saints now! 3-0 up after 35 minutes - without RVP and the afternoon gets better as Boro go 1-0 up Cheer up Welly, the sun is shinning
It's not that I don't agree with it, it's just that I think that Lambert would have had the tactical nous to counter west ham's gameplan and made the necessary changes/substitutions...
I think Welly isn't totally wrong here. Last season we probably would have won this game, we almost seemed to give up in the last ten minutes today whereas last year we famously carried on until the very end. I also feel Lambert would have made the final subsitution which could have swung the game in our favour. Regardless of this, I thought we demonstrated a much more mature style of play against a West Ham side who weren't lacking in any department. Against a better team, we might have been beaten, but you can only play what's in front of you. Lots of positives and I'm happy with the way the squad is looking, think as the season goes on we will get stronger and stronger, as opposed to last season where we petered out towards the final few months. It's going to be a tough season, but I think we have enough quality to see us stay up..
