West Ham United V Aston Villa

Should be a good'un!! Villa are desperate to turn their form around - I'm quite happy for them to do it, just not today. If we can shaft them early and get 'em discouraged we could get a hat full.


COYI!!

Hope you're right Semi.  Not well today but trudging on regardless,  and the traffic is horrendous. Wouldn't mind an absurd goal tally myself ..... COYI !!!

Off to the neighbor,s to watch the game today and shes a Villa fan , should be interesting

the danger of expectations, but I'm fully expecting a win....

Forever negative. Villa's run has to come to an end some time.

good to see carroll back on the bench

see i start expecting wins from west ham and end up disappointed. Busying PTing today so don't know much about the game, but seems a disappointing result to me...

This is new territory for most Hammers, fourth in the table and we're still disappointed. Let's hope this is not the apogee of our season....... ( alright, look it up - I'm trying to add a bit of literary class here).
Thirteen corners and twenty-one attempts on goal ( according to the Beeb) and still no-one could poke it in the goal - let's hope we're not starting THAT lark again. Anyway, a point's a point ain't it - one step nearer safety!

Onwards and upwards, brethren!

Just one of those days by the sounds of it, a point and a clean sheet on the plus side.

can't wait to hear from one of the hammers who went. from reading things on Facebook, although there is obvious positives such as our league position, above spuds, clean sheet, 6 games without loss etc, there is also a feeling like this one SHOULD have been an easy 3 points and but for their keeper it could have been a villa hammering...

It was never going to be an easy 3 points. They rarely are. However too many of our players had below par games. Valencia, Sakho, Jenkinson, Kouyate and Noble. That was enough to make it more even than it could have been

However, it was clear to me that with Villa set up "not to lose" as opposed to trying to win, we did not need 3 "holding players" (Song, Kouyate and Noble). Too many times the ball was cleared by the Villa defence and those 3 players were on the half way line. It was crying out for the removal of Noble or Kouyate to be replaced by an attacking midfield player (Nolan or Amalfitano). What has happened to Zarate BTW?

Once again I witnessed how Noble slows the game down too much for our new style of play. He wants the ball all the time which is admirable but rarely does anything constructive with it; nor does he do it quick enough, giving the opposition time to get behind the ball and re-group. With Kouyate below par ( and/or lacking match sharpness) it weakened us. I am not a Noble "hater"; far from it - BUT - if Kouyate and Song are both fit then Noble should be on the bench

Andy Carroll showed us just what a threat he is and how he draws more than one defender to him, freeing space for others. He will hopefully have a big part to play in the rest of our season

Downing had a quiet first half. Weimann doing a good job of man-marking him. He found more space out wide in the second half and produced some great deliveries into the box


A frustrating afternoon where we didn't create enough chances on target; only 5 to Villa's 4. Hardly domination. However, that is a game that we would probably have lost last season so it is another point in the bag and gives us our best ever start in the Premier League. Not to be sniffed at


My MoM was James Collins. He and Reid were excellent

The future

At home - my preferred starting 11 when everyone is fit is a back five of Adrian, Jenkinson, Collins/Tomkins/Reid (perm 2 from 3) & Cresswell. Kouyate and Song in front of them. A three of of Valencia Downing and Sakho behind Carroll. That line up gives us everything IMHO

Away from home - by all means bring in an additional midfield player but do NOT isolate one striker up front like we did in the first half at Stoke City

good review that mate, very interesting reading. must try and watch motd tonight and have my own thoughts, but hard to do so when its selected, edited highlights. 

Your ideal home 11 sounds rather tasty on paper. all coming together...

Not happy after seeing the highlights, Carlton Cole denied a penalty by some how fouling a player by letting him smash him from behind and then the one on Song.

Hows is that old minge allowed to referee at this level ?

Kray JR wrote:Not happy after seeing the highlights, Carlton Cole denied a penalty by some how fouling a player by letting him smash him from behind and then the one on Song.

Hows is that old minge allowed to referee at this level ?

The refs are getting worse not better Dave. The sooner the fourth official is allowed to inform the ref if he has missed something as important as that, the better

watched the game on the telly...

very frustrating... like T said, lots of players had an 'off' day - Sahko missing several chances that he would normally have stuck away without thinking.

Downing had a gilt edged chance that he messed up

and Carroll had two chances in the last 5 minutes which looked easy to score and would have made him an instant hero (again)

it really was just one of those days...

and one of those days where the opposition goalkeeper had an absolute blinder

the ultimate thing to be taken from this is this...

we didn't play brilliantly... but we kept a clean sheet... and even without winning we climbed a place to fourth in the table... and even id we lose next weekend we can't be overtaken by Spurs or Liverpool, etc...

anyone who's been through the Curbishley and Grant years really isn't complaining about what we're doing at the moment.

What TP said.

Tony P wrote:

Kray JR wrote:Not happy after seeing the highlights, Carlton Cole denied a penalty by some how fouling a player by letting him smash him from behind and then the one on Song.

Hows is that old minge allowed to referee at this level ?

The refs are getting worse not better Dave. The sooner the fourth official is allowed to inform the ref if he has missed something as important as that, the better

I recognised the lino from the Stoke game last week Dave, he referees in the Conference South, he done one of Concords games last season, leading 3-2 the manager asked how long was left he said nothing that's it, but allowed the opposition to win a corner and score from it in that time that wasn't left. A good crop coming through then

Got to agree with what Tony has said.
I've been saying for a while that Noble is a weak link. Takes to long to think about what he needs to do.
Good bottom third prem player but we now need better.
SAM played 3 defensive midfield players Saturday, he could have left Noble on the bench and played Amalfitano on the left which could have given us better balance in the middle.

Agree with what you guys said! Good match review, Tony.

When I saw the Line up he started with against Villa I did wonder why he had started with Song, Kouyate and Noble because Lets be honest Villa were never really going to pose that much of a threat so I thought we could of really given it a go by playing quite attacking line up but instead it seem we were happy just to sit back and attack when we could which at the end of the day is alright as it kept us unbeaten and moved us up to 4th again

I`ve always like Noble as player tho as many people say he does slow the game down a tad for us which in some games is good and another thing I`ve notice with Noble is sometimes he like`s to do the hard pass instead of a simple pass to a team mate near by which sometimes he does pull off but not always.

I really like our Squad at the moment and To be honest this is the strongest squad I seen us have since I`ve been supporting West ham !