Well this is nice. Think your my only pal on here! I never liked Allardyce before he took over. In fact I strongly disliked him. However, he has won a lot of us over. The football isn't pretty. But it is certainly not as bad as people make out. There are plenty of quick passing moves among the high balls into the mixer. His performance as manager in the last 18 months is astonishing. He took over a disjointed mess of a squad and he has turned us into a well organised, strong team with a real togetherness. I can see why opposing fans dislike him though. He is very sure of himself but my word he knows what he is doing when it comes to establishing prem sides.
WHU have adapted very well, & I personally wish them well. It was obvious from the start that they would take to the EPL with ease, from the moment they captured the perfect round peg....... Mr big Andy carroll. So fair play. I reckon a few teams bigger than us will have trouble beating them at their place.
I think I am right in saying that you have taken 4 points from your 5 games against teams outside the "big 6" which works out at 0.8 points per game. We have taken 14 points from our 7 games against teams outside the big 6 which works out at 2 points per game. Your argument is ill informed and and ignores the facts.
Trixter I'm surprised that you have embraced hoofball, ok it's getting results, but I thought the West Ham philosophy was about attractive football? Always admired you guys for that but I'm surprised you have forgotten about it so quickly. As for the respective qualities of the two teams, it's pretty clear that saints are a work-in-progress in many areas, and our failure to really strengthen defensively in the summer has turned out to be as disastrous as some of us feared. West Ham on the other hand have bought well, they've identified weak areas and strengthened pragmatically, whereas I suspect saints were looking to land a Ramirez-style coup at CB, a real quality signing which didn't come off, and in the end had to panic-buy Yoshida (who Adkins had previously denied interest in) as the window closed. Looking at the two teams now, I'd have to say that West Ham are stronger (literally as well as figuratively), but in fairness we have had injuries to key players and I don't think the difference between the two teams is as big as the scoreline suggests. We had a lot of possession and our overall play was good. Were it not for a few moments of madness in defence the result might have been different. That's really my hope in the coming few games, that with a bit of luck and without those silly moments we will start to get a run of form going. That's cost us in so many games already this season and if we don't sort it out we will certainly be relegated. I just think realistically it's difficult to maintain such poor form over the course of a season!
I admire your optimism , their squad is streets ahead , it was a lot stronger last year , now it's miles ahead , they will stay up consolidate and have the option of bringing new players from the academy and purchasing new ones .
Fair do's, I see what you meant now. I thought you were just thinking money, money, money. I understand you were meaning it in a sense of needing to, to get that debt down. Understood.
Come on mate we are not just a hoofball side. It is very lazy to say we are. There is a physical side to our game without question but to suggest that all we do is launch it into the box at every opportunity is very wrong. I have seen much prettier football at Upton Park down the years of course, but I have also seen much worse. We mix in plenty of quick passing as well as the long ball. I saw several hoofs from your team on Saturday too. But I wouldn't call you a hoofball team. The tag follows Allardyce around and it will forever but if you actually watch our games you will see its a bit of a myth. I think we are also a work in progress. We have good, solid foundations but the squad is small and the first team still needs strengthening in several areas. With regards it injuries, on Saturday we had 6 first team squad players missing of which at least 3 would be in the first 11. We all have them, and its no excuse for a performance like that.
Trixter A lot of our fans dont know the game of football nor is history , even when Fat Sam was at the Reebok it was not all long ball , it was physical and tough but not all long ball , lazy stereotype , I think he is a great manager and has always rated him , not as highly as he does of himself but again he is a good a manager and knows what players can and can not do . My thoughts are he will get you to about 10th this year , you will give him the boot and get a respected foreign manager in .
It's not an excuse of course, but you can't deny that having spent £12m on a playmaker and building a team around him, having him missing is going to cause more problems than another player. It is of course completely our fault that we are in this situation. As for the hoofball, I'm exaggerating for the purposes of 'banter' of course, but your team is full of big strong players which lend themselves to a 'direct' style of play, many of whom Allardyce has brought in to facilitate that style, the latest being Carroll. And yes, it works, so credit has to go to him for that, but it is not just a lazy stereotype. The stats speak for themselves: We had exactly double the number of completed passes you had (384 compared with 192), we had 61% of the possession, but you had 57% of the territory. Those stats simply do not support your argument that we play as much hoofball as you.
Good stats and good points. I am absolutely in no way saying you play more hoofball than us. Of course you don't. We have a very physical style but I am just saying that we mix it up and we have also played some sublime stuff this season. I don't know if you watched our first half at qpr or our first half against arsenal but there were some superb Passing moves in there. In some ways this physical style is a breath of fresh air. Under Zola and to a degree, Grant we were playing plenty of tippy tappy football which was nice to look at but very ineffective and resulted in back to back relegation battles. We have added a few strong players and a bit of steal and for me it is most welcome. I saw plenty of route one stuff from you on Saturday as the game wore on and desperation set in but I accept that you are a nice footballing side. Your possession and passing stat it impressive. But keep ball in your own half does not make you a mini Barcelona.
And that isn't me having a pop. I'm just saying its easy to use stats to support an argument. Like that one about Barcelona playing more long ball than us!
I agree that adding steel as you say has made West Ham a more effective side, just as it worked for Stoke, and that's fine, there's not only one way to play the game of course, it's just that it seems at odds with the traditional West Ham philosophy (and indeed the one which Southampton are now espousing). It's always going to be the case that teams who are losing late on in games will play more direct balls though, and obviously bringing on Lambert meant that we were able to play that game, but the same steel you refer to meant you were difficult to break down. Keep ball in our own half certainly won't win games, let alone make us Barcelona, but that wasn't the case at the weekend. We actually had more completed passes in the attacking third than you did, 76 compared with 63. As I said, the scoreline was not a fair reflection of the game. Maiga's goal was excellent (although personally I thought our defence could have done more to stop him), but the other three owed much more to lax defending on our part than good play on yours. The rate at which we are bleeding goals is frankly alarming, but if we can reduce that, our overall play is good enough that we stand a good chance of moving up the table. That's a big 'if' though of course. Yeah it helps if the stats are actually true though of course
Again. Stats can be used to support an argument in many ways. The Barcelona one is in fact true. Barcelona and Real Madrid play as many lofted balls over 25 yards per match as we do. What it doesn't take into account is that most of these balls are cross field diagonal passes whereas ours are clearances/long balls from the back. I was there on Saturday and I know what I saw. First half you had the ball for long spells but created nothing. I don't care where the passes took place. In terms of goal mouth action you had very little. We are quite happy to let that happen as it isn't hurting us. When you started chasing the game once we scored your defence opened up and we ended up with a very easy win. We are very different to stoke. I don't know if that was a bit of trolling or not but stoke are an extreme and you are perhaps another extreme. I would say we are somewhere in between the 2 in terms of style. We adapt. We mix it up and it works. There is nothing morally superior about playing the ball around on the floor. It is great if it works but saying "we lost but at least we played well" Is something I have been saying regularly for 20 years and I am enjoying the change.
I agree , I like to see football as opposed anti football , we played anti football on Saturday we passed it around deep inside our own half , of course you are not going to pull the side out of shape to run for it . People then say we had loads of possession and played well , we deserved to lose for our tactics alone .
It isn't true, I think you're misremembering that stat. Real Madrid do play more balls which are more than 25 yards, Barcelona in fact do not, although they play more than they used to. Neither of them play 'lofted' balls however. I didn't say we had a lot of 'goalmouth action' I was just refuting your point about playing possession football in our own half. To say our defence 'opened up' after you scored is only really accurate for the last goal. The others were down to defensive errors, yes, but were not because we were chasing the game. No the Stoke comparison was not trolling! I don't think there's anything wrong with how they play, in fact it's very effective. It's just not my preferred style. I'm afraid you are very similar to Stoke in terms of style. They are not a pure long-ball team either you know, but both they and you play a territory game. Nowhere have I said we are morally superior for playing a passing game, simply that that's the style I personally prefer, and I thought West Ham fans preferred it too. If you're happy to sacrifice your principles for results then more power to you.
Ok. If we are going to be pedantic let me explain. I consider you playing the ball around in your own half or just inside non-dangerous areas in our half pretty much the same thing. What I am getting at is that your possession stat implies that you dominated the game which you most certainly did not. It also implies that we were chasing the ball for long periods and couldn't take it from you which again is not true. We are happy to let you do your thing while it isn't putting our goal in danger. If you keep the ball for 100% of a match but don't create anything then what's the point? You all seem very proud of your playing style and I suppose you deserve credit for refusing to change. We have been in the same situation for 20 years but now that a manager has come in and shown us another, more effective way, we are open minded enough to give it a chance. I can remember countless times us going toe to toe with arsenal/man u and trying to out pass them only to end in a narrow but heroic defeat. It made me proud but ultimately we would always end up losing. I will not accept that we are as physical as stoke. It doesn't matter what stats you have. They have a unique way of playing that West Ham fans would not accept. Like you say, it works for them and there is nothing wrong with it but they accept it because they are punching above their weight in terms of club stature. Once we were ahead your sideways possession play stopped and the game definitely opened up and became a more end to end affair. We took advantage of that. It doesn't matter if we only won because of poor defending. We made our own luck and took advantage with a very comfortable win as the shots on target stat shows. You say that you are not implying that your kind of football is morally superior then you accuse me of sacrificing my principles for accepting that we have moved away from our traditional passing game. There is a definite conflict if points there.
Not arguing with any of that. But as I've already said, we completed more passes in the attacking third than you did. We did dominate the game in terms of possession, and you dominated it in terms of territory. There's more than one way to play the game. You also scored more goals than we did, which is after all the most important stat! This is is exactly my point, I thought that West Ham fans wouldn't accept the style that Allardyce has you playing but you at least seem to. If you don't see the similarities with Stoke then maybe you're not being entirely fair on Stoke! They aren't simply a hoofball team anymore and they have the capacity to mix it up as well. But they do play a direct, territory-based game and present a threat from set-pieces. So do you. I'm not making any judgements about the benefits of one particular style over another, I just call it how I see it (and indeed, how the stats present it). There's no contradiction in what I say, because there isn't an inherent moral quality to principles. For example if it's a principle of mine to kick the homeless that doesn't make me moral. Conversely if I sacrifice that principle that can only really be described as a good thing.
