West Ham vs Wolves Sept 1st, 2018

oh 7am on a saturday... how glorious it is... especially when you don't get to bed till after 1am...

Team lie-ups being announced on the telly...

Balbuena, Dio, Fredericks and cress well being tasked with defending today.... have they learned anything?

Arnie starts up front...

we're kicking off... playing towards the South Bank / Bobby Moore stand...

Antonio is out there

Wolves shoot wide after intercepting a defensive header... but 3 minutes gone and we've not conceded yet..

ooh... nicely done... Wilshere doggedly wins back the ball... Anderson dodges the Wolves defense and gets in a low shot that the keeper parries... Arie pounces on the rebound but no one is in the 6 yard box to pick up and Wolves save...

But a nice little attack..

more please.

what a nightmare... the feed switched to the Brighton/Fulham game for the last 5 minutes, so apologies for the lack of updates... been struggling to figure out what happened...

still nil nil

Wolves play a long ball down to the corner over our defense... ball cut back to an unmarked wolves player who gets off a shot that Fabianski puts round the post for a corner...

We win the header from the corner and clear... but Wolves come back at us...

WE must have switched to another game as well as the telly feed...

Here's the team:

West Ham: Fabianski, Fredericks, Balbuena, Diop, Cresswell, Sanchez, Wilshere, Antonio, Felipe Anderson, Snodgrass, Arnautovic.
Subs: Zabaleta, Adrian, Obiang, Noble, Hernandez, Yarmolenko, Rice.

we're just playing it around across the back 4...

pretty dull... but maybe it's a way to get them to understand who their team-mates are...

Wolves are trying to harry us... but the ball suddenly gets played from the halfway line and Antonio almost gets a clear run on the wolves keeper... but the black country defense close it down...

I was up late last night cos I binge watched the entire first season of Jack Ryan on Amazon...

not sure why... but the Amazon feed really sucks... poor quality like watching online videos in the 90s... is that a global problem or just something 'i have to suffer with?

reading Twitter it seems all the feeds (legal and other side) all temporarily switched to the Brighton game...

not a lot happening as you rightly surmise...

we're still not winning.... but we're not losing either.

How come Leicester nearly beat Liverpool?

are we that bad?

we're not really pressuring Wolves enough... we're probably a bit gun-shy... but isn't the point of training during the weak to get all of those kinda fears and foibles out of our game?

halfway to half time...

Wolves get past us down the wing... fortunately we clear the cross...

but it's the familiar story of the defense being completely bypassed...

Arnie does a captain's job of tracking back to win the ball after Antonio got clattered off it...

rallies the crowd a little but Wolves are back in possession...

and a ball over the top of the defense, this time into the back... box Fabianski comes running out and jumps to take it off the head of the attacking Wolverine...

half hour gone...

neither side really decided to grasp anything by the scruff of the neck yet...

Snoddy gets a shot on goal...
we didn't get a corner from it... so wolves come back at us...

Wolves have had more possession... which is good because I can't remember a game where the team with the most possession managed to win...

horrible high looping cross from Cresswell but there was absolutely no West Ham players in the box so it didn't matter

Anderson gets brought down on the edge of the box... Arnie tries to wriggle past the defense but the Ref calls it back for a West Ham free kick

Snodgrass kick is deflected out for a corner... good job too... the actual kick was going nowhere...

corner easily saved...

no one in the 6 yard box to even try to compete with the keeper...

a line of 9 West Ham players along the edge of the penalty area... that's defending 101 i guess...

but then Wolves still manage to get the ball down the the corner and put in a cross to the centre of the box that a Wolves player gets to first but knocks the header high over the bar...

couple of nice toe jabs by Diop to wear trouble but then Anderson loses possession and Wolves come back at us... fortunately they foul on of us on the edge of the box and the attack peters out...

West Ham attack... Cresswell crosses, Antonio almost heels a ball into danger but it gets bundled away and we get a corner...

Here's the Guardian's view...

Adam Kline-Schoder emails in from the London Stadium: “The things whose sounds you hear are just about right. West Ham started the brighter, drawing a smart stop from Patrício, but since that have looked ponderous and void of ideas beyond hitting it long and hoping that Antonio/Arnautovic gets on the end of it. Wolves have been quite content to let West Ham pass aimlessly around, wait for a mistake, recycle possession (very well, it must be said), get it forward, and then hit a poor final ball negating all the positive work done thus far.”

weak wolves shot goes wide...

goal kick goes up to Arnie who wins a throw down by the corner flag..

1 minute to go...

Antonio heads wide across the goal...

1 minute of additional time adds nothing to the game except delaying the onset of a cup of tea and a slice of orange...

we played better against Arsenal and Wimbledon...

but at least we're not losing...

fortress whatever-they-call-this-place... is holding strong...

we're at 77% passing accuracy... Wolves at 81

they've also had 7 shots to our 5...

teams are wandering out for the 2nd half... I'll admit, so would I... it's a big old stadium... that's a long way to jog.


Yarmalenko is subbed in for Snoddy...

not sure if that's exactly where the problems were/are... but let's see if it helps.