West Ham United V Coventry

fcuk that sounded soooooooo close

Coventry now changing tactics and trying to push us.. Do not fupp this up again!

OMG two giant changes to us sounds like.. Nouble and Noble.

getting nervous now, not used to this feeling of everything going our way, its even taking my mind of going back to w**k tomorrow

steve h wrote:getting nervous now, not used to this feeling of everything going our way, its even taking my mind of going back to w**k tomorrow

It,s making me open my 4th beer , looks like w**k could be out of the question for me too

Brighton now 3 up

ThreeWheeling wrote:Brighton now 3 up

Fantastic LOL what have we done to deserve this ?

3 minutes added..

fcuk they are pushing a bit now , slow it down now WH

omgomg noble with a big tackle to save us.. corner coventry.. headed away by diop.. throw in to us phew, hopefully their last attack.

Blow the finguck whistle :pale:

Jiggs wrote:Blow the finguck whistle :pale:

He heard ya

happy days

woohooo! joint top .. what a fantastically lucky day for west ham.. with this dip in performance for saints and their top scorer now suspended for a few matches, it looks like they finally have lost their breaths after hitting the ground running. WH, MBro and Cardiff in the top 3 at the end of the season ?

Best start on the new year we could have ever hoped for.. Thank you! Good job, Sam and the boys!

3 Pints and all the results went for us for a change

Yep indeedy Geeze....

Another gift horse West Ham.....don't look this one in the mouth!

excellent , goal difference shorterned to 2 goals now too

Good 3 points but we do need to shut down these home games. The away form was never going to last all season so we need to be winning our home games & not stressing everyone out. Don't like having 4 clubs in the mix. Hopefully we can build momentum & shake a couple off, at least. Boro don't look consistent to me & Soton might have caught a crab. Cardiff worry me - I think they are on a mission. They don't like seeing Swansea grabbing all the accolades in the top flight.

All in all though, despite my rant, got to be happy - tie first on points coming in to the new year with some reinforcements hopefully on the horizon.

Jiggs wrote:

Tony P wrote:I really wish they would stop saying that David Bentley is "missing", "still injured", "not available" etc. We have cancelled his contract and he has gone back to Spurs. He is no longer on loan to us/on our payroll/a West Ham player. END OF

Rant over

Sorted darlin x

I didn't mean you, silly ! xx

looks like saints have lost Do Prado for a while too, injured, leaves them short up front and they aint exactly bagging them in over the last 5 or 6 games,
also saints fan are not so confident now, a lot of concern on thier boards

Big Sam talks injuries, wasted opportunities and transfer targets in the Coventry post match press conference, which we once again bring you exclusively in full...


Sam: obviously you should have won by a lot more but it took the cool head of Kevin Nolan to grab the points today?

Yes. We were all relieved when we saw it go in because we were all wondering whether it was going to happen today for us or not on the basis of how many chances we'd created and how good their goalkeeper was. It was an outstanding performance by him and I was getting a little worried in the last embers of the game that we wasn't going to get what we deserved and there's always that nagging feeling about the quick break out the opposition might get and nick it as we have seen before against Cardiff and Ipswich.

But gladly in the end we got what we thoroughly deserved. We've played very, very well today and the only thing that I can criticise the lads for is not winning by more goals. Everything else was fantastic.

[James] Tomkins seems to be growing in strength at the back?

Yes, because he's playing games on a regular basis. I think he struggled along for a couple of years not being selected by the previous managers or being injured. But when you start playing on a regular basis, that's when your game starts to improve.

We have to give Winston Reid a huge amount of credit because for eight or nine weeks he hasn't kicked a ball because of his dislocated shoulder. He has two days of training then plays two 90 minutes [of football] in 48 hours. That is a massive reason why we're looking stronger at the back because Abduolaye Faye is injured at the moment.

Obviously, without a doubt, having the suspended players back made all the difference. You saw the quality and how we controlled the game, how often we persisted in pressurising Coventry who finally cracked in the end.

Again, John Carew didn't play today. Why?

He hasn't played well enough when he's had the chance. Freddie Piquionne didn't even get on the bench. He's had the chance but he hasn't played well enough. Frank Nouble's come back from Gillingham, played really well at Derby and scored so he gets on the bench.

Have you spoken with John about this before?

If I have, it's got nothing to do with you...

But is he involved in your future plans here?

Yeah, I mean he could get a game at Sheffield Wednesday next week and get some vital match practise. We really thought we had John on song when he came on as sub at Crystal Palace and played here against Blackpool, when he played up front with Sam [Baldock] and we won 4-0. He scored himself, then he had a couple of niggly injuries that have knocked him back.

Our real problems have not been the front line - apart from them lads not scoring enough - [but] the amount of injuries and suspensions we've got. It's devastated our defensive line but we've still come through and got a very crucial three points. It's a big game to win because the FA Cup's next week and we don't play in the league again for 11 or 12 days.

Everybody rushes in at this time of year I think to have a listen at what Middlesbrough and Southampton have done. You're a bit more satisfied because they've slipped up and we've gained the three points on them today, so it makes it that little bit sweeter.

[Question re: transfer window and bids for strikers]

I wouldn't say it's a priority but it's an area we're looking at purely and simply because we had 22 attempts at goal today and scored one; we had 19 attempts on goal against Derby, nine on target and scored one; Barnsley 19 attempts on goal, 10 on target and scored one. Our conversion rate is just not good enough. Birmingham City, first half - we created six or seven chances, didn't score the second goal in the end and ended up with a draw.

So the conversion rate is not good enough at the moment. It was alright at the start of the season, we were going threes and fours. Now we're only going on the one side and we've really got to try and change that into twos and threes again.

In an ideal world, how many players would you bring in?

Eleven... [laughs] Sorry.

In an ideal world I would say two. Two, because we only have five subs and we have to rotate the squad but two quality players would be great. Maybe a quality defender. And if it ended up as three, maybe a defender, a forward and a wide player because Matt Taylor's [struggling].

We had to play a diamond today because we've got no natural width in terms of wingers. Matt Taylor, Julien Faubert can play there but he needed to play right back today because Joey [O'Brien] was feeling his hamstring so we put him on the bench. We had to play a diamond so a wide area would be interesting. To be fair, we did try and get Andros Townsend from Tottenham but he ended up at Leeds rather than with us.

Again, John Carew didn't play today. Why?

He hasn't played well enough when he's had the chance. Freddie Piquionne didn't even get on the bench. He's had the chance but he hasn't played well enough. Frank Nouble's come back from Gillingham, played really well at Derby and scored so he gets on the bench.

Have you spoken with John about this before?

If I have, it's got nothing to do with you...

Love it...