Overly long writings about West Ham United FC. This is the kind of thing you might like, if you like this kind of thing.

Thursday, October 26, 2006

West Ham vs Blackburn: 29 October 2006 (Match Preview and Other Ramblings)

1. Gadzooks!

A goal, you say? Not round here mate, you've got the wrong blog.

2. I Went To A Fight Once And An Ice Hockey Match Broke Out

Do West Ham actually play football anymore, or do we just serve as official tabloid fodder?

I'm just wondering because I am getting a tad sick of reading exactly the same article about us in every single daily newspaper, every single day?

"Beleagured club, Pardew's job on the line, players unsettled, Joorabchian, Icelandic biscuit magnate, Sven Goran Eriksson, where's my coffee Ralph blah blah blah" etc....

Cooey! Hello! Everybody look at Charlton please. When all is said and done I'm fairly confident that I'd rather have Dean Ashton and Carlos Tevez to bring back into a struggling side than Kevin Lisbie and Marcus Bent.

3. On The Other Hand

Should we really be mocking Charlton when Watford are above us in the table despite not having won a game yet?

4. Can His Parents Reid?

I can't believe that the press haven't picked up on the fact that at Chesterfield we played a man by the name of Kyel. (Correct spelling).

5. Hit The North

And so into town come everybody's favourite bruisers from the North West. You'll no doubt fall off your chair when I tell you that we went one down in both home games against Rovers last year, coming back to win 3-1 on the opening day of the season and 4-2 in the FA Cup 4th Round tie. A review of the Premiership meetings between us shows that neither team has ever done the double over the other and we have settled in to a nice little arrangement where neither team ever wins away from home. (We took that to extremes in 2001/02 win we lost 7-1 and God punished Roeder by making him drive Paolo di Canio home after the game, true story).

Anyway, Blackburn are somewhat of an eclectic bunch. Tugay is the best Premiership player you've never heard of, Morten Gamst Pedersen in cute in an understated way, Robbie Savage is an alien, Andy Todd won a reality TV competition for boxers to play football and Brad Friedel has a very strange accent.

Undeniably they do have a propensity to kick other teams but they also play reasonable football too, and given that Chesterfield just played us off the park I shall not dwell on our relative merits for very long.

6. Big Benni

Benni McCarthy was reputedly on the verge of joining West Ham last season, before former club Porto pulled the plug on the deal. Benni was apparently so disenchanted by this that he went completely off the rails (We must have been offering some serious money for someone to be upset at missing out on a move from Porto to Chigwell).

Things apparently deteriorated to such an extent that rumours abound that the night before a Champions League game Benni was caught with two women in his hotel room. When asked to explain he said "They are my hairdressers".

Now I don't know about you, but to me that has veered away from the area of "excuses" and into the realm of "background information".

7. Captain Average

Nigel Reo-Coker has been shocking this season. One decent performance at Portsmouth cannot hide the multitude of frankly, rubbish outings that have come either side. The curious decision to loan out Mark Noble and effectively tell NRC that he would not have to fight for his place has backfired enormously. Instead we have seen lazy, arrogant performances that have smacked of Paul Ince circa 1989 when the original Judas decided to stick on his favourite Man United shirt and get a few holiday snaps.

All of the above notwithstanding, Reo-Coker is still just 21 and dips in form are inevitable. That doesn't mean you play him in every game though Alan.

And Nigel, telling the whole world that you love reading "The Art of War" is great but even Sun Tzu believed in tracking back every once in a while you know.

8. Alan, Alan, Alan, Alan

Whenever I hear Sven Goran Eriksson mentioned as a replacement for Pardew my support for the latter only goes up. Whenever I hear Curbishley mentioned I wonder what can possibly be achieved by swapping one Alan for another. Whenever I hear of Big Phil Scolari I think in disgust of his Portugese teams rolling around, feigning injury.

Whenever I hear of Martin O'Neill I fall to the floor and weep like Madonna has just stolen my child.

9. The Grass Actually Is Greener

Robert Green was outstanding on Tuesday. Of course, when you go away to a struggling 1st Division side and your goalkeeper wins man of the match it does hint that maybe your defence isn't so flash.

10. Erm, Hang On

After losing at tottenham Pardew was quoted as saying that we lacked quality in and around the box.

If only we had an internationally proven, world class striker that we could build our team around. Of course, that's just a pipe dream for a club like us. Best stick Bobby Zamora up there then.........

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