West Ham United FC v Aston Villa

JulianDicksLeftKnee wrote:Looked like a nod on from a West Ham player to me on the live visual feed I was watching-still, the offish wouldn't lie so I stand corrected and have booked a SpecsSavers appointment Monday.

SpecsSavers!? my mate goes there.. i would not bother , he chopped two of his fingers of this week

well, when all is said and done... the result stands and it's a result I'd have been more than happy to take before kick-off

as usual... watching the game ain't aleways the same as the result... we started off very nervously... first half in general wasn't up to much.

we were much better after the goal but the undisputable fact was that Villa were poor... VERY poor.

how much of that contributed to us looking okay, we'll not know till we've played a few more games... but on the evidence i saw... we were lucky to be playing such a flat team... it could easily have been us shipping 5 goals if we'd played Swansea, Fulham of WBA (I'm watching them now and they're ripping Liverpool to shreds... who'd have thought Steve Clarke had it in him?)

Hopefully Swansea and Fulham won't repeat those scores as they're our two next opponents.

Collins looked very good today

Demel had a decent game

Diame looked good

Taylor was atrocious

Not sure what to say about Cole... he's won a lot of new fans with the interview he did... but he looked much the same to me. Same can be said of Noble and Nolan... all three of them will need to put in a better shift if they're to really contribute to the team this season.

Would have been lovely to cap the game with a goal from Miaga at the end but I think over all we probably didn't deserve it.

the 1-0 scoreline is as narrow as it suggests and I worry a bit what we'd have ended up with if we'd played anyone better than villa.

still three point in the bag and hopefully everyone will have a better idea of what is expected of them and how the Premiership works.

If we can turn today's nervy performance into points against Swansea and Fulham then things will be looking pretty good

Three points and a clean sheet, any moans would be churlish.
Interesting though, Villa under Lambert look like they want to play "the West Ham way" - ball on the floor, lots of passing, but what good did it do them? I saw a stat saying they had 60% possession, but poor ol' Bent might just have well stayed on the coach for all the delivery he got. So what - if I read a report accusing us of "inelegant muscularity", at least we manage to look like we might be difficult to beat , without us actually going off down the Stoke path. I for one am reconciled to life with BFS now even if it's going to be a bit dour at times.
C O Y muscular I !!!

You said it Semi....We've been pushed around and treated like a soft touch for too many seasons now. Time for us to over the rest.

No more Mr. Nice Guys

I can't believe that stat is true, I looked on premier league.com [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] to find possession stat but it is not there. At one point in the 2nd half, when all hope was lost for Villa, the possession stats on TV said West Ham 52% - 48% Villa. Now I don't know if that was just for some period of the 2nd half, but 66%, not my impression of the match, it was more 50-50. Fouls: West Ham 18 - 0 Villa, what does that mean ?!

There is only ONE statistic that matters - West Ham 1-0 Aston Villa

Tony P wrote:There is only ONE statistic that matters - West Ham 1-0 Aston Villa

IronDane wrote:I can't believe that stat is true, I looked on premier league.com [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] to find possession stat but it is not there. At one point in the 2nd half, when all hope was lost for Villa, the possession stats on TV said West Ham 52% - 48% Villa. Now I don't know if that was just for some period of the 2nd half, but 66%, not my impression of the match, it was more 50-50. Fouls: West Ham 18 - 0 Villa, what does that mean ?!

Come to think of it, ID, I think I saw the 60% stat on Sky's halftime report and it must have balanced out in the second half - apologies for being misleading.
But as our Glorious Leader said in the after-match interview, we couldn't get the ball in the first 15 minutes because Villa were passing it around, but they didn't actually DO anything with it.

Another 12 1-0 wins and I will be one very happy hammer! Only 36 pints to safety

More stats for you from FourFourTwo -


"West Ham United 1-0 Aston Villa
Premier League beware: The Hammers netted more set-piece goals (33) than any other Championship side last term (33); Kevin Nolan’s goal was also from a set-piece. On the other hand, while Aston Villa completed a couple of corners, they didn't find a single teammate with any of their 10 crosses in open play"