A rather poor showing on Saturday up at the Stadium of Light. West Ham was comprehensively outplayed from start to finish and came out on the wrong end of a 3-0 scoreline. With Mark Noble and Mohamed Diame out of the midfield, there seemed to be a lack of push from the middle of the park, and combined with poor link-up play and haphazard defending, this would see the Hammers drop their sixth road game of the season. Coupled with other results, West Ham finds itself seven points above the relegation zone, and with performances like Saturday’s, fans may be starting to look at who’s behind in the table rather than who can be caught. It’s easy to argue that this was West Ham’s worst outing of the year, and it is up to Sam Allardyce to motive the team to perform not only in the FA Cup replay at Manchester United, but what is also looming as an important game at home against QPR. Having already lost games to relegation-threatened Wigan and Reading, West Ham can ill afford to gift QPR points in their battle to stay in the Premier League this year. Rangers comes in on a decent run of form, with a victory against Chelsea and a tie against Tottenham in their last two league games along with a draw against West Brom in the FA Cup. Harry Redknapp seeks to work his managerial magic and rescue QPR’s season, and will look at this upcoming game as an opportunity to pick up some valuable points. And you know it must be something important if Big Sam sends me an e-mail explaining what these upcoming games mean. Here is a copy of the message that was sent out to West Ham supporters from the manager:
We have to take it on the chin and admit we were second-best against Sunderland. We do lose games of football and we have to accept that we will lose, but I cannot accept how we played when I saw how well we played last weekend against Manchester United
We didn’t look like the same set of players this week who played last week, with no disrespect to Sunderland because they are not as good as Manchester United, and we managed to close Manchester United down and nearly shut them out. Our home form and performances are outstanding but our away performances are the reverse of that – they are just not good enough.
I think we can provide the kind of chances that Marouane Chamakh thrives on. He’s been short of first-team football so the more he gets the better he will get. It’s the same with Joe Cole and Alou Diarra. I know they’ll get better with the more games they play.
James Collins pulling up with a hamstring means I’d like to add a defender to the squad as we’ve now only got two centre halves left in James Tomkins and Winston Reid and aside from young Dan Potts, we’ve got no other fit left-back in the squad. We don’t want the injuries all in one area so we might need to take a look at the market and see if there’s anyone that can help us in that department.
While Wednesday night’s replay is about the glory of the cup competition and it will be fantastic to go to Old Trafford, QPR next Saturday is our bread and butter and we must make sure we secure three points against them.
Come on you Irons!
Big Sam
It’s now up to the team to show some of the fighting spirit that Allardyce clubs are known for. Personally, a prolonged cup run is not as important to me as consolidating the team’s position in the Premier League. This season was always going to be a fight for survival, and finishing safely in the table would complete a satisfactory job, especially considering where the team came from 2 years ago. Anything else would be a cherry on top.
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