NEWSNOWWest Ham v Aston Villa, what to expect
By Ian Salisbury
As we come to the last game of the season, a game with little at stake for West Ham except to retain their 10th position and with Spurs at home to Liverpool only 2 points behind us, what sort of game can we expect?
Normally at this stage of the season West Ham playing at home play with a verve which goes along with this being the last game, especially at home. It is hard to imagine how that will apply to this game, as latterly the team seem to have ‘been going through the motions’ more so than the general malaise that we as West Ham supporters have come to expect of our team at times.
If as we are led to believe Anton Ferdinand and Matthew Upson are going to be back, this should give us a stronger back line and one which should be able to cope with Gabriel Agbonlahor and John Carew. With Lucas Neill reverting to his customary right back position, will he be able to contain Ashley Young, on previous experience it would point to this being a key conflict? I am sure that if Nigel Reo Coker plays his reception will be hostile and his on field battle with Scottie Parker should see the latter ‘bossing the middle of the park’
It’s not going to be an easy ride as Aston Villa look to a Uefa place with Blackburn Rovers breathing down their necks. Personally I can’t see our boys pulling anything out to give this season a great send off, although we may manage a draw, or conversely if the bonus rumours are to be believed, ‘the wallet’ may come into play and they may lift themselves suffciently to sneak a win, who knows!
As to who will be at WHU next season, I have been very disappointed by our style of play at times, it’s hard to imagine when you read so many books about our history that Alan Curbishley is the lad who the late great John Lyall describes as ‘ one of the keenest young players I ever knew, he was always asking questions, I knew he would go far’ having been brought up in the WHU tradition why are we not seeing this in our week to week displays, it’s all to easy to blame it on injuries, but at times we have shown a complete naivety which has been surprising. West Ham fans expect their team to go ‘and die for them’ to play attractive football and give them something to believe in. We need changes, our expectations now that Bjorgolfur Gudmundsson is in charge were that we would be rivalling the tops positions, so far this doesn’t seem to be the case, trust us to get a billionaire with sewn up pockets. More to follow.
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I am pleased that Liverpool are out of the CL, otherwise i dont think they would play their strongest team against Spurs in case of injuries.
I have a strong feeling that we will draw with Villa, Villa have a lot to play for, and will not be sitting on the beach, west ham have to finish this game before half time to win the game, if we can go in at half time with a 2 goal lead, then we maybe could for once go home smiling.
Great Post Ian.
Article ok until the final rant which is unfortunately the sort of ill-considered stuff that we have heard too much around the club this season. We are not in a relegation battle – great. We are in 10th spot and may well finish the season there – after last year, great. BUT our style of play has not been what we want so lets all kick the manager – bizarre. You wrote “it’s all to easy to blame it on injuries, but at times we have shown a complete naivety which has been surprising”. But the whole point is that IT IS ALL ABOUT THE INJURIES. The key creative and attacking element of our side has been all but wiped out by injuies this season. You just can’t ignore that. The injury list is everything. Look at Villa and Everton and just wonder where they would be with our injury list and where we would be with their injury record. That tells it all.
The formations and style that we have had to adopt in order to guarantee safety has been dictated by the players available. To say that the injuries are no excuse for naivety when they have resulted in us having to blood a 19 year old full back against some of the best forwards in the world is just crass.
And despite that look at who we will be probably finishing above; both Newcastle and Spurs have spent loads more than us and have had most of their players fit for most of the time. We are above them when we have been forced to rely on the likes of Carlton Cole and LBM for most of the season. The reality is that it is an amazing acheivement. I have not enjoyed the football we have played as much as I would have liked but there has to be a sense of perspective and realism.
What really annoys me about all the moaning is that the board may end up doing something stupid in the summer and changing the manager and we will be back to square one. Look at Moyes and the time it has taken him to make progress. Clubs of our sort of size need stability to produce the goods and I for one won’t be judging Curbishley at least until the end of next season. The sad fact at the moment we are getting a reputation as the sort of sad pathetic moaning support that Spurs have had for years – and frankly it makes me sick.
Decent article but three points from a Villa perspective:
1) I think you underestimate what Gabby and Carew could do to your ring rusty central defence – assuming Ferdinand and Upson start.
2) Reo Coker has the best tackling record in the league this season and will eat Parker for breakfast imo.
3) Fancy flogging Dean Ashton? Easily the best player in your team at the moment.
Joneonvilla are you dreaming to even think that reo sulker will eat parker for breakfast.Sort it out mate.
Ironside, apologies from me that your comment took so long to come on here, for some reason it went into spam.
Good point you have made about Curbs and Injuries, It will be interesting next season to see how he copes with a fit squad, the first 5 games will decide his future with the fans, and thats guaranteed.
BTW great article Ian!!
Joe, I think you are right that he will be judged on the first five games and that what worries me.
Bizarrely a lot of people already seem to have made up their mind about Curbishley and are just waiting for any chance to crank up the pressure. Would it be right to judge him after just 5 games next year (assuming he makes it through the summer)? In reality this will be far too early whatever happens. So far we have had half a season from Curbishley dealing with a relegation crisis (succesfully) and one season dealing with perhaps the worst injury crisis to hit any club in recent years (successfully). The lists of players suspended or injured before the Man U game showed 2 for Man U (with their world class squad) and 12 – that’s right 12 -for us. And still we / Curbishley got slated! In my view, the very least (and I mean the very least) we can give him is one full season next year to see how he does with our better players back in action, plus any new buys.
Lets say we have a flying start next year, will that be the end of the matter? I don’t think so as it’s hard for clubs of our size to maintain that all season – look at Man City. Villa, Everton, Portsmouth and Blackburn have all had bad spells at different times this year after a good start. So if we happen to have a slow start does that mean we are suddenly in crisis? Equally not, as inevitably we will be building a new team (unlike, say, Everton or Villa who will start the new season with a lot of continuity) and it is bound to take time to gel and find our best combinations. That’s what building a team is all about and that’s why chopping and changing managers and personnel so often leads to disaster. What we must have is continued stability and, above all, more patient support.
Ironside you are right but, a managers responsibility is to put out a side that is balanced, many times throughout the season we have played with 1 man up front, in those cases where support from the next line of 5 players was poor. On other occasions we have played with only wide player, that being our only option to get behind our opponents. We don’t have a player who from midfield runs at defences, generally we have 2 solid central midfield players who are there to break up the play and get the ball forward. AC’s choice at this point has been to play John Pantsil as a wide player, or rely on him or Lucas Neill pushing on, not good or even worse put Jonathan Spector on, who is at best a ‘bits and pieces’ player, and would not be my first choice under any circumstances. Like many supporters I heralded the return of AC, but now I feel that we need someone to take us to the next level, and I’m sorry it isn’t him. Slaven Bilic yes if we’re going to keep it in house, or we need to look for a high profile manager with a proven track record.
bigsauze, I’m not sure how you can say I am right and then go on to criticize Curbs for, well I’m not sure what really other than playing some players in unusual postitions!! That is the whole point we have not had our players fit, particularly our attacking players, and latterly our defence. There is a reason Spector was getting picked – there was no-one else!!
So ask yourself, with the very limited options that we have had this season, is 10th a good finish or not? The answer on any fair assessment just has to be yes. All this talk of “the next level” is just pie in the sky until we see what a fit squad can do. One of the biggest critics of managers over the years and someone who played under some good ones too was Paulo Di Canio and what does he say about Curbs? Here’s the quote:
“Alan is a good man, a great manager. He is a hard working man, and also I think he gives a tactical system in the way you want it and the players follow him in the right way. I think he is one of the best managers in England.”
There is too much knee jerk wingeing amongst the supporters at the moment and I think that many have just not thought it through. Remember the “you don’t know what you’re doing” chants as he brought on Carlton Cole just in time for him to get the winning goal against Derby? If Curbs is still playing Cole, Spector and LBM when all our players are fit then I will be there having a go too. But you know as well as I that he would not be doing that unless he had to. And not only has he had to use these players, amazingly he has had us winning matches with them too. He is not getting the credit for doing pretty well in a tough situation, and the stick and abuse is , I’m afraid, a very bad reflection of the state of some of our support these days.
Ironside, what you say about having continuity is clearly true – just look at Ferguson and Wenger. However, you’re complaining about injuries but are you honestly surprised to see Ljungberg, Dyer and even Parker spending long periods on the sidelines? All 3 have been injury prone in the past, especially Dyer & Ljungberg, but it was AC who bought them in, knowing full well their histories.
While AC did well to avoid relegation last year, the differnece between WHU and Pompey, Blackburn & Man City is the managers have been wiser in the transfer market. You dont need to spend a fortune all the time – look at Roque Santa Cruz or Martin Petrov.
The big problem with AC is he seems unable to bring WHU onto the next level, pushing for Europe, which is what they should be doing.
So the question is do you stick with him despite this apparent and arguably crucial flaw or start afresh with someone who can realistically drag the hammers into european contention?
dynamopete, again I just don’t get this “next level” stuff that everyone keeps going on about. The biggest factor at work here is that our support has been getting far too critical for a number of years now and its almost as if people are actively hunting around for reasons to have a go at the manager. As I have mentioned in my other posts above there is no serious basis for moaning like this given what Curbishley has done in the circumstances. Yes in some ways it has been a frustrating season BUT there have been reasons for that and overall you could make a good case to say we have done very well.
As for the signings, yes you could point to the injury records of Dyer and Ljunberg were it not for the fact that Dyer’s leg was broken in a freak tackle (the manager’s fault??!) and we have also had to deal with the loss of Ashton, Collins, Gabbidon, Parker, Etherington, Zamora, Bellamy, Bowyer, Upson and Ferdinand for all or part of the season – all the manager’s fault too??
The general winge culture has been setting in for a while now going back to the departure of Redknapp. We know that he is probably the best English manager in the league and we know how good he is in the transfer market. But at the first sign of something going wrong or a couple of signings that did not live up to the billing and it was all cries of “Redknapp out”. We are now seeing the same thing with Curbishley.
Unfortunately the general unrest over the manager says more about the lack of patience and perspective amongst a chunk of our support than it ever does about curbishley’s ability. We need to stick by him and give him a real good chance for next season at least. We know from other clubs that chopping and changing at the first sign of adversity just does not work as a way of running a football club. I don’t want that to happen to us.
This is an ongoing question, in essence if our chairman does suddenly decide to spend a lot of money would you really trust AC to buy the right players. Given his track record at Charlton he is a ‘middle of the table’ manager, I expect you will counter this by saying that he has never been in that position, but given the money he did spend last summer, and the fact that he bought risky players,what other conclusions can we make. You say that this is reflective of how WHU supporters have been over the last few years, however over the years there have been times where we have been able to ‘pull out’ outstanding results. WHU supporters are not used to having to grind out results, our demeanour over the years has been to go home having seen some good football, and although we might have lost, we were ‘on the edge’ of our seats because our team did something we could believe in. That is not the case now, why else are the supporters moaning? and why is it that AC can’t understand it, he comes from Canning Town, like you and me he bleeds claret and blue blood, we are passionate about our, and it’s about time we had a team that compliments our suuport.
Sorry to bring this up Big Sauze, but it is an important part of the debate.
As an ex West Ham scout, what advice would you have given Curbs on the players that he was about to buy, bearing in mind, Curbs and Maggie did have the Fans and probably BG on his back towards end of summer transfer window, wasnt a few of our players that were signed, brought in at any cost due to Fan pressure, and something i find it really hard to believe is that BG did not know anything of the wages that were going to be offered to get these players, as the owner of the Club why did he wait months to pretend he was unaware of what Ljungberg was getting paid?
I think he really thought he was doing the right thing, we were all carried along on the euphoria of Eggy’s enthusiasm. AC signed players of a known reputation, some that he had formerly had at previous clubs, but and this is the crunch, they were players with a reputation for being injured, and were obviously risky. BG will have had an idea what was going on, for someone of his business status, it’s hard to believe that he would allow his investment to be managed by proxy without having some control, and isn’t he represented by his son at all games?. (Very interesting to read your article about him yesterday, the rumours circulating WHU are that he wants out, particularly as the banking business is suffering a bit at the moment)
It’s very easy to point the finger, we have a reputation over the years of buying players that do not live up to expectations, unfortunately we seem to have suffered in this area more than most. At the end of the day scouts give their recommendations, whether they are taken up is another thing. I suggested we sign Lucas Neill from Millwall years before we signed him. What really worries me and this is where Ironside’s argument falls down, is that at times of real need, he calls on Jonathan Spector amongst others, and if we have top 6 apsirations, we need to be using quality, not make do players.
Big Sauze, you said “What really worries me and this is where Ironside’s argument falls down, is that at times of real need, he calls on Jonathan Spector amongst others, and if we have top 6 apsirations, we need to be using quality, not make do players.”
Not sure if you had read my previous posts under this article but if you do you will see that I have put a whole series of points about the unmerited criticism that Curbishley is now getting and how dangerous this is to the club at present. The point about Spector actually supports what I am saying. Yes we HAVE had times of “real need”. If at the start of the season you had been told that our injury list would be so bad this year that at times we would be playing Carlton Cole on his own up front as our only fit forward (other than Henri Camara and, perhaps LBM) and that Spector would be drafted in to play centre back, where would you have expected to finish this year? How much attacking flowing football would you expect us to play? But that is exactly what we have been faced with.
As it turned out, we actually managed to beat Man U (in perhaps our most convincing win against them in terms of dominating the game that I can remember for many years) with Carlton Cole on his own up front and Spector at centre back!! The tactics used in that game were actually a triumph for Curbishley, not that it ever gets much of a mention. Of course there have been other results that were not as good but you HAVE to remember what he has had to work with this year.
It’s frankly ludicrous to accuse Curbishley of not realising that “we need to be using quality, not make do players”. The whole point about this season is that we have been forced into that position. And my point is that faced with that situation we have actually done bloody well. Given the difficulties this year I seriously think that its an achievement not to be in a relegation scrap. Instead everyone is moaning that we are not close enough to qualifiying for Europe and have not been playing pretty enough football. And I still think that this reaction is a bad reflection on some of our support and is potentially dangerous for the future of our club if we are to avoid the chaos of becoming a Man City or a Newcastle with a managerial merry go round.