Wigan 2 - 0 West Ham (Or The Fall of the House of Sullivan)

"You must leave now, take what you need, you think will last

But whatever you wish to keep, you better grab it fast"

- Bob Dylan, "It's All Over Now Baby Blue"

Ostensibly this is supposed to be a match report about a game that took place between Wigan Athletic and West Ham United in the Fourth Round of the FA Cup. For any of you who had the good fortune not to see this match, I want you to have in mind the image of a penguin and a great white shark fighting. Who do you think would win that particular match up?

Your first thought would be the shark, naturally, given all of his inbuilt advantages and everything that your experience tells you about the combatants, except that you forgot to ask me where the fight was taking place. And when I tell you it's taking place on land you'll understand why the shark had no ability to hurt the penguin, much less defeat him. Eventually the shark just...died.

And now you understand what happened to West Ham at Wigan. We just...died.

When is enough enough?

I intend no disrespect to Wigan when I say that, by the way, as they not only won this game, but won it comfortably. The 2-0 margin of victory could have been more, and while they did benefit from as bad a penalty decision as you'll ever see, and from Arthur Masuaku losing control of his cerebrum, they thoroughly deserved to win. 

The tone was set before the game when our latest injury crisis meant that Wigan were favourites with most bookies. And the sad truth is that with them flying high in League One and us still waist deep in the relegation mire, it's entirely possible that we might be in the same division next year.

But that's not what we were faced with here. Instead this was a game against a team two leagues below us and whose annual wage bill will be less than what we pay Andy Carroll to put together his equivalent of the Zagat guide for London hospitals. There is no situation in which we should ever be the underdogs for this fixture and yet there was a sense of impending doom about this from the moment the team had to leave the Bournemouth game via MEDEVAC. 

I would honestly rather we bought one of these than Daniel Sturridge

And it's because of that sense of inevitability that something snapped inside me when I watched this shit unfold. I've been somewhat prepared to defend the ownership of David Gold and David Sullivan because I felt that their greatest failing was not one of avarice, malevolence or indifference but a misplaced sense of their own competence. If they would just get out of the way and let qualified people make the decisions, I'd be fine with them as owners. But here we are, eight years from their purchase of the club and they have steadfastly refused to do that. So perhaps it is time to ask ourselves - how much has really changed? When is enough enough?

Financially there is no doubt that the club is an awful lot healthier than it was back then when we were being run by the creditors of our former Icelandic owners, and the players had to wash their own kit, but as I've mentioned several times before, nobody supports a balance sheet. 

So having all this extra money might be the result of some shrewd financial management, and razor sharp economic brilliance or maybe it's the result of grabbing a seat at the table when the astronomical TV deals started dropping right in the middle of the central trough. But either way, having all that money hasn't actually made us any better. We continue to be the same as we've always been; a well supported side who can never manage to arrange all of our ducks in a row at the same time to enable us to achieve anything. So when our youth system is good our transfer policy will let us down. And when our first team is decent the squad will be found wanting. And so it goes until our sights are gradually lowered all the way down to be fixed on survival and little else. 

But here's the thing. You can do that when you take over a club if that is a reasonable expectation for fans. Dare I say it, if you take over Swansea or Bournemouth, with their small fanbases and stadiums and their low starting point, then dragging them to the lower echelons of the Premier League is a significant achievement. But if you take over West Ham in a relegation struggle and relegate them and then get them promoted and then move stadium and change the club badge and charge us more than fans at Manchester City to watch the team, then you'd damn sure better have your sights set higher than being Bournemouth. 

So, when is enough enough?

Right. Fucking. Now. 

***

"What are we waiting for? 

Tell me, what are waiting for?"

- Matthew and Me, "Figure"

Here are our league finishes in the eight seasons prior to Gold and Sullivan taking over:

2001-02 : 7th

2002-03: 18th (R)

2003-04: 4th Championship 

2004-05: 6th Championship (P)

2005-06: 9th

2006-07: 15th

2007-08: 10th

2008-09: 9th

and since:

2009-10: 17th

2010-11: 20th (R)

2011-12: 3rd Championship (P)

2012-13: 10th

2013-14: 13th

2014-15: 12th

2015-16: 7th

2016-17: 11th

If you look closely you can probably see a difference between these periods in time, namely that the former features four top half finishes and a typically Shakespearean relegation. Not that I'm going to eulogise over the ownership of either Terry Brown or Eggert Magnusson but that's kind of the point isn't it? When our current owners arrived, they were supposed to be bringing the new broom that swept all this inconsistency and rank amateurism aside and yet as Will Grigg headed in a goal here after just seven minutes, I genuinely found myself wondering whether anything about my club has changed for the better in the last eight years. 

True, we had that magical season in 2015-16 when the Boleyn got the fitting send off she deserved, as we gloriously failed to make the Champions League. Nothing screams West Ham quite like the sense of a tantalising missed opportunity, after all. But what else have we had beyond a litany of failed promises to move the club forward, a traumatic and botched stadium move and the almost immediate failure of any plan implemented to improve the team?

Those season tickets that cost the same as the Etihad don't come with quite the same cast iron guarantee of entertainment or success do they? And while I understand full well the inherent unfairness of the league we play in, I am also fully cognisant that we have spent these eight seasons fighting with one hand behind our back, such is the amateurish leadership and the total lack of an overall plan for this club. 

Will Grigg's on fire, Joe Hart's not actually off the ground

Thus it was that Wigan took a deserved lead, and then played better football than us and nullified us so thoroughly that we finished this game without registering a shot on goal. And behind Joe Hart's goal stood four thousand West Ham fans, who were forced to watch as their side offered nothing even as noteworthy as a decent tackle as we exited as meekly and quietly as David Walliams at a male only charity gala.

And this is the crux of everything. I didn't even think we should have played a team this strong at Wigan. With our league position so precarious and our injury list so long, I simply didn't think we could afford the risk, with Palace to follow just 72 hours later. But whether you feel that we should prioritise the FA Cup or not - and I accept that many disagree with my view - it is absolutely unforgivable that we are forced to make that distinction in the first place.

How can it be that a club this wealthy, with these resources and ludicrously unfair advantages over the likes of Wigan can be reduced to scrambling around like this to field a team? And come to think of it, how can it be that even after we have to scratch about we can still field a starting eleven with 247 international caps and look like a team of people who won a charity auction to play this game?

In the end we neither went for it nor gave up on the tie. We played the same guys who have been playing every fixtures for weeks (Ogbonna, Obiang and Masuaku) and supplemented them with those vaunted youth prospects who spent ninety minutes proving that just because fans say "there must be someone decent in the youth setup" doesn't make it true. 

And now Obiang is probably done for the season and Masuaku is deservedly banned for six games for the despicable act of spitting at an opponent and our list of absentees continues to lengthen. And we're out of the Cup, with a tangibly negative effect on our league season. To those who believed that we could attack the FA Cup with no impact on the league campaign, that fantasy has now been well and truly shattered. 

But whatever your position on this game as a fan, that's all just hot air. It doesn't matter. We don't actually impact anything. This is a professional football team with the thirteenth highest wage bill in Europe and as fans we are entitled - yes ENTITLED - to expect our team to be competitive against anyone, let alone a team with a quarter of our resources. 

So how can we possibly be so poorly run that we are forced to shelve games against teams two divisions below us because we can't compete with them? Why is our squad so badly constructed that this team was the best we could muster here? Why is our fitness record so bad that we once again have a crisis where we struggle to name a fit eleven players? Why is our wage bill so huge that we can't comfortably add players without first needing to ship some out? Why does our Academy fail to produce any first team players, while our local neighbours are selling theirs for £20m? Why is our manager once again being undermined by a media whispering campaign as well placed leaks start to lay the blame for the lack of transfer activity at his door? And most pertinently of all, why are the people who have presided over all of this for eight years still the ones who are making the decisions that keep this whole clown car on the road? 

I am done. I am so done. In fact I am so done that I have now started talking like an YouTube food vlogger. Give me quinoa over the need to play Quina, I suppose. 

This can't go on. I can't take another transfer window that has no purpose beyond fixing the mistakes of the previous one. I can't take the slow undermining of another manager from a Board who are desperate to hire an expensive, big name coach and yet fail to understand that it is they who might be the single biggest barrier to hiring such a person. I can't take another Karren Brady column in The Sun that further embarrasses the club with needless, unwanted commentary on our affairs. I can't take any more nepotism. I can't take it. I can't.

So, when is enough enough?

Right. Fucking. Now.

***

"It's been a long, a long time coming

But I know a change gonna come, oh yes it will"

- Sam Cooke, "A Change is Gonna Come"

The obvious answer to all of my questions in this piece is straightforward. Why all these things are happening is because the club is not being run properly and the people responsible aren't going to fire themselves. There is no obvious decision making structure, and so the owners, the chief scout, the manager and apparently the owner's sons all participate in the process. I have argued many, many times for a Director of Football and while I fear I may be getting tedious in my repetition, I would like to think that you will all agree that there are warranted grounds for such circular arguments. 

This current transfer window is a perfect example of our failure of process. A manager who isn't guaranteed to be here in six months is assessing players with a mindset entirely consistent with that short term timeframe. At the same time, an owner who swears he isn't involved with transfers unless they are successful has released a statement saying that he is working "night and day" with the manager to bring in new players. And all the while, it's screamingly obvious that what the club needs is someone to hit the reset button. We need younger players. We need fitter players. We need cheaper players. We need better players. And this structure hasn't been able to identify them with any consistency for years.

For example, how many injury crises is too many before we stop blaming it on bad luck and start wondering about other factors? What about that dirt cheap training ground that doesn't have any indoor facilities? How about Gary Lewin being recruited from Arsenal with much fanfare about the fact he was a West Ham fan, and far less noise about the chronic hamstring injuries Arsenal had dealt with for years? Or indeed how many players with poor injury records did we have to buy before acknowledging that perhaps it was unrealistic to expect them to suddenly transform their bodies after two weeks in a rubbish bin filled with ice, in Rush Green?

Andy has always been good on crosses

And if you think that I'm reacting rather exaggeratedly to a few injuries, perhaps it would be worth revisiting what some of our previous managers have had to say on the topic:

Alan Curbishley in 2007

Alan Curbishley in 2008

Gianfranco Zola in 2009

Avram Grant in 2010

Sam Allardyce in 2011

Sam Allardyce in 2012 

Sam Allardyce in 2013

Sam Allardyce in 2014

Sam Allardyce in 2015

Slaven Bilic in 2015

Slaven Bilic in 2016

Slaven Bilic in 2017

At this point it boggles my mind that West Ham aren't the biggest spenders on injury prevention and training facilities in Europe. 

And as I watched Josh Cullen struggle to imprint himself on this game, and Reece Oxford regress before my very eyes, and Antonio Martinez look every inch a player destined to play in the lower leagues it brought home starkly how useless our Academy has been for the past decade. I believe in Declan Rice, I think Reece Burke has something and I refuse to give up on Oxford but it shouldn't be this hard. In an age when young players have such huge value because of what you don't have to spend to get them, it says so much that we seem determined to use other clubs to develop our youngsters and then pick them up when they are let go at 19 or 20. 

Once again I must repeat myself - when you are doing things that nobody else in your industry is doing then you are either miles ahead of the competition or miles behind. I'll let you decide which we are. 

***

"Forty eight thousand seats bleats

And roars for my memories of you"

- Alt-J, "Something Good"

By the time that Reece Burke was ludicrously punished for having his hands by his sides when Grigg flicked the ball on to his right arm, the jig was up. Grigg duly scored the penalty to make it 2-0 but so anaemic was our attack that it felt a little bit like they were rubbing it in. Which in itself is like getting mugged by a kid with a water pistol.

By then Masuaku was long gone, having responded to some sort of provocation by spitting. Whatever was said, it's no excuse, as you can't do that, and now we lose him for six games. His bete noir was Nick Powell, the former Manchester United midfielder, who had been the best player on the pitch. Some of that was due to the fact that Pedro Obiang had been stretchered off after a poor tackle from Max Power, which went unpunished and gave an interesting juxtaposition between how football deals with bad tackles by comparison to actions that don't end players seasons but are largely unpalatable.  

Seems reasonable

We later saw new arrival Joao Mario enter the fray, and immediately take up a position out wide in search of some reception so he could call his agent and fire him. From Milan to Wigan and a ten man West Ham side is quite the journey, after all. My initial impression was that he will need to increase the pace of his play by about 300% if he wants to survive, but this wasn't a day for judging newly arrived foreign imports. His time will come again on Tuesday, and one hopes he has the ability to adapt and justify the typically astronomical wages and loan fee that we have shelled out. These are exactly the kinds of cost that fans don't see and don't factor into why we won't have any money to spend in the summer. 

And thus we limp on to Palace and Tuesday and if ever the London Stadium needed to be jumping it's for this one. I can't even really fathom what kind of team we might play, but it will be a tough old slog. And while I apologise for presenting such a bleak and pessimistic H List, I also have to acknowledge that this is truly how I feel about West Ham right now. 

It is time for a change at the top. 

Perhaps not in so drastic a sense as selling up, because calling for that is nonsense unless there are people actively seeking to buy the club, but in terms of decision making and structure. We have surely reached the end of the House of Sullivan. It may not be tomorrow or this year or even this decade, but I've turned that page now. Sullivan is not capable of doing the job he insists upon doing and the time has come to gracefully stand aside. Or at least I'm flexible on the graceful bit but the standing aside is non negotiable, and it's not acceptable either to hand the role to a teenager. 

Up to a point I think he's done some good things but the hubris of taking on an enterprise such as this and repeatedly failing to acknowledge your own shortcomings is simply not acceptable. His greatest crime has been to treat each season as a rehearsal, with a default position that once it all goes wrong it can be fixed in January, and then they'll have another crack in the summer. And with every failed attempt, the game has advanced further without us as we remain stuck in some Nineteen Seventies timewarp where the chairman owned a local van hire company and the manager dealt with the petty cash.

So let me address David Sullivan directly for a moment. 

Nope David, these are real live games and those are real live fans, and the money they shelled out on Saturday was hard earned and they deserved better than to see such a pitiful display. You've had a go, and I don't doubt that you've done your best but this can't carry on. We can't continue to be a patient in need of life saving surgery. Please, for the good for the club - get somebody in who has a track record of delivering the kind of success you purport to want the club to have. Because, and I say this with respect, you have never managed that. You have never qualified for the Champions League, you have never overseen a team that regularly finishes in the top eight and challenges for honours. You have never attracted a top class manager to work for you. You had never overseen a stadium move and that's gone roughly as well as your forays into the world of film making.

West Ham is not a plaything. We deserve better. 

And if a final example is needed then consider the recent President's Ball. That scandal blew up and I didn't think it would be possible for it to be embarrassing for West Ham and yet somehow it was. It turns out that David Sullivan is a patron of that event. And similarly, his teenage son Jack was on the guest list. Let's leave aside for the moment whether Jack should be attending such an event at his age and just focus on the fact that he is the Chairman of West Ham Ladies Football Club. If ever an incident highlighted the nonsense of how we run our club this was it. I don't know if Jack Sullivan took up his invitation, but he was on the guest list, and that alone shows a lack of judgement.

I am so tired of this. Of feeling so endlessly negative about the club because all we ever seem to do is stumble from one crisis to another. I want a plan. I want a vision. I want hope. I want to see a decision I don't understand and be able to think "Let's give them the benefit of the doubt as they know what they're doing" rather than "Christ, what nonsense is this now?".

I don't want this to be so obviously and painfully hilarious.

Moyes at the Sullivan mansion, patiently pleading for a player under 30. pic.twitter.com/NCkDgspdPz

— MC (@LeBigHouse) January 28, 2018

So, when is enough enough?

Right. Fucking. Now.

West Ham 1 - 1 Bournemouth (And Other Ramblings)

"Why everything's turned inside out, instilling so much doubt
It makes me so tired, I feel so uninspired"
- Bic Runga, "Sway"

Thirty eight days.

Eleven games.

One replay.

120 minutes.

Ten injuries.

Zero new signings.

The sixth highest average attendance in Europe.

The thirteenth highest wage bill in Europe.

The tenth highest supporter spend in Europe.

The seventeenth highest revenues in Europe.

Still, Shrewsbury were well organised.

I don't think it should be too much of a surprise to anyone that we ran out of steam today. This was a team that was not so much running on empty, as crawling on their bloody hands and injured knees toward a far off oasis in the desert. Since playing Arsenal on December 13th we have been averaging two games a week and as a result our dressing room has a distinct ER vibe to it.

5.55pm. The West Ham dressing room. Gary Lewin - what a signing!

This week Manuel Lanzini and Aaron Cresswell hobbled off to join Jose Fonte, Winston Reid, Edmilson Fernandes, Andy Carroll, Diafra Sakho, {pauses - my fingers are cramping} Michail Antonio, Andre Ayew and Reece Oxford in the corridors of Whipps Cross Hospital, and as a result our bench was like a boyband audition. It is rarely promising when your substitutes are warming up while singing "Backstreet's Back".

Worse still was the news this morning that Marko Arnautovic will also miss significant time, with another hamstring related injury that we can't say we weren't warned about by Arsenal fans, after they had years of them under Gary Lewin.

But our failure to beat Bournemouth wasn't for a lack of effort, or indeed of quality, but more a lack of fit bodies able to summon up the necessary energy levels needed to influence games at this level. We dominated the opening exchanges of each half, but couldn't find the breach in the wall that would have allowed us to pour through. Bournemouth probably deserve some credit for that, as they defended stoutly, rode their luck and engaged in some typically world class shithousery.

But for all we might feel that we were the dominant force in the game, it is worth pointing out that we were dead on our feet for the last period. After Lanzini went off with the first hamstring injury heard all around the world, we retreated deeper and deeper and resorted to smashing the ball long in the vain hope that Javier Hernandez had transmogrified himself into Andy Carroll.

What all of this did was highlight the folly of this squad composition. Watching us put out a team at the moment is to be reminded of a Guy Ritchie thriller, in so much as the twists are inevitable and when it happens it's not actually thrilling. This is a disaster that has been months in the making and if you'll excuse me repeatedly beating this dead horse I see here in front of me, it is unbelievable that nobody at the club apparently saw this coming.

We regularly top the Premier League injury tables, sold off more players than we brought in, and overloaded ourselves in areas where we didn't need to by buying players wholly unsuited to our playing style. If this January goes the way we all think it will, then it would be the fifth consecutive transfer window where the recruitment team at West Ham has failed. That is some fucking record for people still in a job.

So while Joe Hart sits on our bench picking up a six figure weekly salary for being inferior to our current keeper, we are forced to turn to members of Blazin' Squad just to patch up our midfield with minutes to go in a crucial game against relegation rivals. I say again - it defies belief that apart from Bilic, those same people are still making the decisions about the composition of our playing staff.

So, as frustrating as this game was, I think this was a fair enough result given the circumstances. I couldn't fault the efforts of our exhausted players, and on another day with some better luck we might have been ahead at half time and given ourselves the opportunity to hit the visitors on the break. As it is, perhaps everyone at the club can resolve to never again approach a transfer window using the motto "Fortune Favours The Old".

***

"Lord, I tried enough, kept on hoping

Kept my fingers crossed, I tried everything I know"

- The Boothill Foot-Tappers, "Get Your Feet Out Of My Shoes"

After the game I was keen to see this Caley Graphics shot map as I was interested to see how many truly good chances we created. We had so much of the ball and pressed so well that it felt dominant, but I couldn't recall too many clear cut opportunities. For instance, Pablo Zabaleta picked out Marko Arnautovic with a fizzing first half cross and Asmir Begovic pulled off a great save to deny the Austrian, but in reality I'm not sure he could have done much more than he did, given that the ball arrived at such pace and through a crowd of defenders. It was straight at Begovic and he did well to tip it over.

As it turned out our best chance was probably when James Collins flicked a header across goal for the stretching Lanzini to miss by inches at the back post. I'm not sure it's a failure of xG as such, but chances like that don't get captured on the map above.

But what was most encouraging in this game doesn't really show up there either. Our football in the first half was as good as I've seen since Payet left, and perhaps better than anything we've produced since we played Chelsea off the park at Stamford Bridge in 2016. A game we drew, by the way. See if you can guess who refereed that day and awarded Chelsea a last minute penalty when Ruben Loftus Cheek fell over his own feet outside the box (*).

Arnautovic and Lanzini continued to show that quick thinking footballers able to carry the ball at pace will inevitably always pose a threat. Behind them our defensive pressing was outstanding, which meant that the visitors simply couldn't get out of their own half. Having Cresswell back helped as he snapped at the heels of attackers, and made sure that the distribution had a bit less of a "smacking golf balls into the sea" feel than it did when Collins and Ogbonna were having a go in his absence.

But as Begovic stood firm, we faded gradually because pressing with that intensity requires a team with an average age of lower than 54. Not long before half time I thought Bournemouth had scored when a well worked corner kick flashed narrowly wide, but in general it felt that we'd let them off the hook by not capitalising on that early pressure.

The second half, however, saw an upturn in fortunes as we pressed well once again and began creating lots of promising situations going forward. There was still frustration as we seemed to always be a slightly misplaced pass away from being in, but we still had enough ascendancy to feel like the late winner would be ours. Somewhat typically then, we conceded with twenty minutes to go as Ryan Fraser slipped into the right side centre half's channel and ran on to a lovely Junior Stanislas pass to drive home the opener. I thought Adrian got himself into a bit of a mess with his positioning and ended up in the middle of nowhere and pointless, like a footballing Creamfields if you will, but it was still a good finish. Sadly, this was another goal conceded between our golden oldies of Collins and Zabaleta and perhaps a salutary reminder that when half your back four qualifies for a free bus pass, it's probably not wise to leave them one on one with fast, nippy wingers.

Mercifully, Bournemouth then unveiled a flawless homage to Huddersfield as they allowed us to equalise directly from kick off, when an Ogbonna punt was flicked on by both Kouyate and Hernandez to Arnautovic. His shot was blocked by Ake but bounced up nicely for Hernandez who poked home from ten yards. If you haven't seen the goal, it is pretty much exactly what we signed him for, and an enduring reminder of the value of a goal poacher. Rather than being the springboard to a full blooded finale, however, it felt rather more like the culmination of a month's worth of Herculean effort. We faded badly, and were indebted to a couple of Adrian saves and some diffident finishing to hold out for a point. For all that the visitors looked dangerous and so, so pace on the break, in fairness, a defeat would have been wildly unjust.

(*) Bobby Madley. But you knew that. Even if you didn't.

***

"And I suppose that's the price you pay

Well, oh, it isn't what it was"

- Arctic Monkeys, "Leave Before the Lights Come On"

And now, at last, a break of sorts as we go to Wigan in the Cup. But for Lanzini that break will last for at least a month and for Arnautovic three weeks, and will rule them out of the vital home games with Crystal Palace and Brighton. With them goes all of our attacking drive, leaving us at the mercy of playing Hernandez or Ayew and all the evidence so far suggests that the lack of artistry will be painful, and that this will work out about as well as the time that Glen Roeder decided we didn't need any cover up front as we had Ian Pearce in case things got a bit hairy.

Shit

All of this seems to me to be an inevitable corollary of having to play such a ludicrous schedule, and using so few players in doing so. I know that some fans think it was worth risking or even sacrificing our Premier League status for a tilt at the FA Cup, and while I don't agree, I realise there are many that do.

But this is the cost.

Lanzini played the full 120 minutes in the midweek game against Shrewsbury, and Arnautovic came on as a substitute and when the body is pushed to those sorts of limits then you see muscle injuries occur. In any other year, with a better constructed squad and more cover and with the league not being so tightly contested I would be the first to demand a cup challenge, but none of that is the case right now. It is to the eternal shame of the club, but we simply don't have the playing resources to compete on two fronts at the moment.

I think, therefore, that this has been the first misstep that Moyes has made, and by overplaying the likes of Lanzini, Arnautovic, Ogbonna, Masuaku, Kouyate and Obiang he opened us up to an unnecessary and potentially fatal risk of being without them in games that really matter. It is my fervent hope that when that team is announced at Wigan on Saturday that the most common response from most us will be "who?"

What is particularly painful about losing Lanzini and Arnautovic is that their nascent partnership was just starting to take shape. I'm not sure I really believe that there is anything much more to it than just the simple fact that they are both classy players who understand the way in which the other is trying to work. Those movements into space that each of them can read before the other does it - to me that's just what good players do, and they do it better than any of our other strikers.

Presumably we will now see Hernandez return, at which point I suspect we will see the canny interplay disappear, as we will simply have to try and figure out ways of getting the ball into the box at the earliest opportunity for the Mexican to try and latch on to. My worry about that is that it places too much burden on uncreative players to do the creating, but also that we've been so ineffective when Hernandez has been on the pitch. This is primarily because he likes to play high, and off the last defender and he's not really into the idea of mazy dribbles and quick one twos that pull defences open. At present our most inventive attacking threat is probably Arthur Masuaku. Let's all take a moment shall we.

With our yeoman midfield behind providing stability but not much attacking threat, we really, really, really need the medics to patch up Michail Antonio and then find Jack's YouTube password because when the entire bottom half of the table is separated by two wins, you cannot take survival for granted. Plenty will disagree, I know, and it pains me to say it because I have frequently said that if we aren't trying to entertain and win trophies then we're merely taking up space, but that was also said in the context of us having a squad that could beat Shrewsbury without needing 210 minutes to do it. It's also true that the league doesn't have any obviously cut adrift teams at this point - God, I miss Sunderland - meaning that a couple of losses can drop a team like a stone.

Where have you gone, Jozy Altidore, our nation turns it lonely eyes to you

I would even go so far as to suggest that this might be the most important eight days of Sullivan's tenure so far. Inertia now could see us relegated. A typical overspend could see us unable to sign anyone in the summer. Ho hum, Sully, you haven't even told us how hard you're working yet. Is everything ok?

I'm not saying that I don't understand those who would prioritise a Cup run over league position, but I think it does need to be pointed out that the league position we might end up forfeiting could be 17th. That seems far too high a price to pay for the inevitable Fifth Round away trip to Old Trafford.

***

"I'm crazy 
Crazy for feeling so blue"
- Willie Nelson, "Crazy"

Here is something I observed on Saturday which I have decided to call The Three Stages of Pablo Zabaleta.

Picks up the ball on the edge of his box

I am abandoning my post and going on a wonderful adventure!

Passes the halfway line

Blimey, I'm certainly not playing for Manchester City anymore am I! Where the fuck is everyone?

Loses the ball high up the pitch

Oh my God. There are people trying to kill me, everything is on fire and their winger is in behind me again! I think Big Andy's gone down again!

I think Pablo needs a rest.

***

"Oh I really want to know

So tell me, where does all the money go?"

- The Libertines, "What a Waster"

I wonder, then, about our transfer activity. Things have changed a lot in the last eighteen months, as the fan backlash finally seems to have convinced the club to keep more of their activity in house and limit official announcements made via the Twitter account of the owners' teenage son. (I wonder how many times Real Madrid bloggers have ever had to write a sentence like that). 

But what also seems to be evident is that something is off. We shipped out more players than we brought in this summer, and some even requiring our CFO to look up the term "profit" for the first time. But even with that, and even with the alleged increased revenues from the move, we still seem to be wanting to let someone go before we can bring anyone in.

If that is true, it suggests that the next company accounts will be fascinating reading. We've seen the Mayor's report so we know that West Ham contributed very little to the stadium conversion, meaning that the bulk of our costs are therefore out on the pitch. I don't know the details of our wage structure, but Hart and Hernandez are perhaps the two best paid in the squad. Along with Carroll and Reid they occupy a huge slab of our overheads and yet are so rarely on the pitch.

So. Much. Money.

The folly of not treating good health as a skill on a par with finishing or passing is once more haunting us, as we suffer our annual injury crisis and are again forced to convert Rush Green into a field hospital. It still boggles my mind that anyone would want us to sign Jack Wilshere given that this crisis is literally a yearly occurrence. Karren should really replace the crossed Hammers with crutches if she wants total brand synergy.

I've written in the past about the stupidity of our January transfer activity, and we shouldn't ignore the fact that when you do dumb things like pay £10m for Robert Snodgrass, the repercussions of that are felt for a while. It's entirely possible that we wasted some of the summer budget last January, and the domino effect has trickled all the way to here. If I'm honest, I can't actually see how that could be the case given that we got £25m for Dimitri Payet, but I'm clutching at straws, because the alternative is that they spent it all on wages or are choosing not to spend money at all, and either of those would be too depressing a reality for a January evening.

As it is, I don't want the club to waste yet more money on desperation signings, but doing nothing is no longer an option. A deeper midfielder is vital to cover Noble and Obiang, and a player with the ability to create chances is equally important, be they a striker or a wide player. I have no idea where Moyes goes from here tactically, but we'll probably have to accept a reversion to the cautious defensive pragmatism of his early days as we try and inch our way clear of the quagmire. It is at times like this that I am grateful to have him - the thought of Bilic trying to get something out of this team is terrifying.

And so it is that we might look back on these cold, soaking wet, slate grey January games and be eternally grateful for the points we eked out when we were at our lowest ebb. This might feel like a disappointing result, but context remains our friend and with our sights now set so low they might as well be underground, this scrambled equaliser could be priceless.

And so on we limp, the walking wounded who now finding walking a bit of a struggle. Context might be important, but on another day, at a later date, with safety secured, we're really going to have to have a chat about what we all think is an acceptable return for all of those big numbers at the top of this article. I don't know about you, but I sure as hell don't feel like this is it. 

Huddersfield 1 - 4 West Ham (And Other Ramblings)

"Just a perfect day, problems all left alone, 

Weekenders on our own, it's such fun"

- Lou Reed, "Perfect Day"

And that will do very nicely indeed. 

In a season that seems to have been tinged with a sense of disappointment from the moment that we started the year with all the well drilled organisation of the Hawaiian Emergency Alert team, and then slammed shut the transfer window with a slightly incredulous "Is that it?", it must be said that in those brief, tantalising moments when things have been good, they've been almost perfect.

Mark Noble. His legs have gone. Literally, in this case. 

Two down to Spurs at Wembley and then roaring back to triumph 3-2; that thumping 3-0 win at Stoke; Chelsea kept at arms length and poked like a tiger for a 1-0 victory; the last gasp home winners against Swansea and West Brom that masked the inadequacy of what had gone before. All moments to remember and a reminder that when the stars align and the gods are with us, then West Ham can serve up great days just like anyone else.

And what was even better about this one was that it almost sprang from nowhere. After twenty minutes of this game it wouldn't have been a surprise if a great celestial hand had appeared from the clouds, picked up the John Smith's stadium, turned it upside down and shaken it, while yelling "IS THIS THING ON?".

It wasn't for a lack of effort on behalf of either side, but the stars weren't aligning for anybody. The home team huffed and puffed but never looked like causing us any damage, while we continually got Manuel Lanzini on the ball in dangerous positions, only for his radar to malfunction. Shades of that Hawaiian Emergency Alert team once again. Overall, I'm not sure I've seen so much effort produce so little of value since Madonna last starred in a film. 

In such circumstances, the tropes demand that you either need a moment of individual brilliance or catastrophic error to conjure up a goal. And so it was that Huddersfield keeper Jonas Lossl lined up a goal kick, noticed that all his defenders on the edge of the box were marked, and still passed it to the one of them anyway. This is a tactic which the Terriers have used regularly all season, and for all I know it could be a key component of why they have done so well. But in that moment, with the way that Lanzini, Arnautovic and Noble were aligned, it was fairly clear that we had set ourselves up with the expectation that they would try this, and thus just looked ludicrous.

So Lossl found Joe Lolley, Arnautovic hassled the young man, and Noble stole it from him and ran through to coolly bend it round the keeper for a barely deserved lead. It was an interesting passage of play because we had already forced Lossl to go long from goal kicks previously and won the ball back as a result. What I liked about this was that we were prepared for it and it worked so well it resulted in us scoring. I might be doing Bilic and his staff a disservice, but that feels like exactly the kind of attention to detail that was so frequently missing from his latter day teams. By contrast, whether it's towels on the sideline for long throws, or minimising the gaps between midfield and defence, you sense that there are no stones being left unturned by Moyes in the search for an edge. This goal would be Exhibit A for why that's a Very Good Thing.

***

"When I'm outside in a real good mood

You could almost forget 'bout all the other things"

- Kurt Vile and Courtney Barnett, "Over Everything"

It was at this point that I started to get a nagging sensation that I'd seen that goal somewhere before. I'm always hugely appreciative of opposition goalkeeping incompetence, as I often mention to my eldest daughter Barthez, and Lossl was definitely ringing some bells here. And then it came to me. 

Finn Harps. 

I shall say no more, but I shall simply invite you to watch this clip. Thirteen year old me nearly burst a blood vessel laughing at this the first time round. I think Lossl might have been channelling his inner Finn Harp here. 

***

"Are you hoping for a miracle?"
- Bloc Party, "Helicopter"

So with a one goal lead to protect and Huddersfield looking insipid, it felt very much to me like we could sit on that advantage and possibly snatch a second on the break. This is why my opinion should always be taken with a Super Sized pinch of salt.

Approaching half time, we were still playing disjointedly when Lolley picked up a loose ball wide on our left, cut into the box under minimal challenge and curled a sumptuous equaliser inside Adrian’s far post. The finishing in this game really deserved a better showcase – similar to when when you see a band you like on The Andrew Marr Show at nine on a Sunday morning and Chris Grayling is tapping his foot away on the sofa. If that was a goal from nothing, then it at least better reflected the balance of play in a game where neither side was really doing anything of note.

But if goals from nothing are your thing, then Marko Arnautovic seems to be your man. It took him just eleven seconds of the second half to latch on to a speculative Kouyate flick on, pull it out of the air, baffle Tommy Smith and drill home a fine low left footed shot. In that moment the entire Huddersfield team talk was consigned to the waste paper bin, and we could once again retain our shape and look to hit them on the break. It was a moment of sublime skill and a far more difficult finish that it looked at first glance.

Thereafter, we looked like we might score with every attack, as Huddersfield decided to give defending a miss and move to a "Rush Goalie" formation that I haven't seen since leaving school. We duly took advantage with a beautifully crafted first goal for Lanzini, which he finished smartly. He then helped himself to a second when Arnautovic went full "T-Rex out of the enclosure", leaving a trail of mangled bodies behind him until his strike partner arrived to smash home the loose ball like some glory hunting Velociraptor. The Austrian celebrated with all the relish of a dad who had just discovered his kids have changed the Sky Q pin.

Marko celebrates Lanzini's second

But here's the thing about Moyes' West Ham. We continue to win in very unlikely ways. Now hold on, because I know you might be spluttering at the mouth and wondering how I could possibly find fault with a 4-1 victory, so let me firstly say that I am not. This was a wonderful win. A perfect day. But let me sound a note of caution, because this is The H List after all, and you can go elsewhere for cheerleading if that's your thing.

As this shot map from Caley Graphics shows, while there wasn't much of a threat all day from Huddersfield while we displayed almost unheard levels of ruthlessness in our finishing. I was somewhat shocked when I saw the low xG of our chances, but that is kind of the point of xG - to remove the inherent biases of our own opinions. And so hats off to Noble, Arnautovic and Lanzini for their classy finishes. As it was, our best chance actually might have fallen to Kouyate who couldn't redirect an Ogbonna header just inches from the line, after a corner.

But the reason for my nagging concern is that we won't score four goals every week from six shots on target. We won't score last minute winners every week. We won't keep Chelsea quiet for 85 minutes every week. We won't have three shots to Spurs 31 and get a 1-1 draw every week. And if you think that is all just a load of overly negative shit, then ask yourself whether either of Bilic or Pardew were able to sustain their habit of going a goal down all the time and still winning. Regression to the mean is a bitch, yo.

And yet, with every passing fixture Moyes seems to conjure up ever more unlikely results. And here we are, with one defeat from our last eight fixtures and up to eleventh in the table. It is truly impressive what he has been able to achieve with a simple devotion to proper organisation and an ability to actually coach and improve players. I'm not yet ready to commit to Moyes on that long term deal, primarily because this sample size isn't anywhere near big enough, but also because I would like to see more of those wins like we had at Stoke. An impressive, dominant, no doubt about it, "Alexa beat these fuckers like a piñata", kind of a win.

Because, for all the excellence on display here, I'm not sure it's entirely sustainable in the long run to lean so heavily on keeping things tight and hoping that our midfielders cum forwards will conjure something up. And in fairness to Moyes, perhaps the best thing about this little resurgence is how underwhelmed he seems to be with it all. As if he can't quite get over how low the bar is in East London. He reckons we have a long way to go until we're close to the level he wants us at and I reckon he's right. That said, if the road is going to be long, then a few pleasant diversions such as this will go a long way toward easing the burden.

***

"Oh, but I was so much older then,
I'm younger than that now"

- Bob Dylan, "My Back Pages"

If the calling card of the Moyes regime has been his ability to rejuvenate players, then perhaps the shining example has been Mark Noble. I remain convinced that Noble was either injured or unfit at the start of the season, as it turns out that a 70 yard Croatian long jumper might not have been right at the cutting edge of elite athlete fitness preparation. Since his return to the side under Moyes he has been exemplary, and has done a marvellous job of thumbing his nose at unbelievers like me.

What I really noticed on Saturday was how much sharper he looked during the many short sprints that are the staple diet of the modern day Premier League midfielder. While Noble always has loads of time on the ball and always looks to retain possession in tight areas, I think he is also benefitting from the new system. With less ground to cover, he seemed more explosive and quicker over those short distances. His goal was a case in point, but generally I thought he did his work brilliantly and was the best player on the pitch, even allowing for the performances of Arnautovic and Lanzini.

I always think that laymen like me probably make far too much of formations. I strongly doubt whether professionals care too much about the concept of a 3-4-3 vs a 3-5-2, but instead focus simply on their tasks and the space on the pitch they are either supposed to attack or defend. Because ultimately, football is really just a game about space and trying to gain supremacy of it.

But if you divide the pitch up into five sections lengthwise, I think you can visualise why Noble seems to be better utilised in this system. None of this is an advanced tactical revelation, by the way, but instead just something I've been thinking about for a while.

If you look at the pitch in this way - and I stress again that I am not a qualified coach or the second coming of Ron Greenwood - I think it's easier to see that in this 4-2-3-1 formation you demand a lot of your central players. The two central midfielders have to laterally cover all five sections between them, unless the advanced three are hard workers and prepared to track back all day. Of course, if they are Dimitri Payet, Sofiane Feghouli and Manuel Lanzini then you might as well cast a couple of spells and get yourself a pet hippogriff to do it.

Similarly, the two centre backs need to be able to provide a solid, mobile base and allow the full backs to roam high up the pitch and try and get overloads out wide. We worked this pretty well in 2015-16 when Noble and Kouyate were imperious, and we had one of Europe's best players drawing all sorts of defensive cover on our left wing. With two mobile full backs, and a generally weak division, we were able to ride this formation all the way to the cusp of the Champions League.

But in the intervening years, the ravages of time and injuries have taken their toll. Certain players have visibly declined, and I counted Noble among them. But in this new system, there are some obvious advantages for him. Firstly, he can now park himself in the middle of that midfield three and have a greatly reduced amount of space to police. Now Obiang and Kouyate can drift out wide to provide support for those isolated wing backs. Noble, meanwhile, can sit in the middle and control possession against the weaker teams, and he did that here splendidly.

It helps, too, that he has a solid three behind him meaning that his backtracking should be reduced as well. There are flaws of course, and the wide areas continue to look a vulnerablity that we have seen repeatedly exposed, but as an overall platform it all seems pretty stable, although even as I write this all out, I feel like we might need to check that Zabaleta's legs are still attached given all that running he has to do.

I don't know how much weight any of that would carry with qualified coaches, but to my uneducated mind it makes some sense. That deep lying style allows us to compress the space well, and reduce the stress on older legs, but does also rely on the front men having to cover lots of ground ahead of them. In that sense, the renaissance of Arnautovic has relied as much upon his off the ball work as his goalscoring. Note that he was missing and Hernandez started at Wembley, when it looked like we couldn't have hurt them even with a Sherman tank. Which is kind of ironic given that Obiang unleashed a Howitzer to open the scoring.

As I mentioned above, I'm not entirely sure all of this is sustainable, but it feels very much like Moyes has cut his cloth to fit the players he has available to him. A better centre back and he might be able to revert to a back four, a better central midfield and he might be able to go to a pairing in there and push forward another body to help Arnautovic. Whatever he decides, I still think we need to some warm bodies this month.

***

"I am he as you are he as you are me

And we are all together"

- The Beatles, "I am the Walrus"

So for all of that praise directed towards Noble and the defensive shape of the team, the most eye catching piece of our performance was the front two of Lanzini and Arnautovic. By deploying them as a pair, Moyes continued his policy of slinging players into advanced positions when he doesn't trust them to do any tracking back, with Antonio being the first deployed in this manner.

Talking to a Newcastle supporting friend on Monday morning, he said something which made me laugh, but actually makes some sense. He said that we were using Arnautovic in a similar way to Ronaldo.

The Portuguese Arnautovic

After I stopped screwing up my face, I thought about it, and it's not quite as insane as it seems. It's insane, of course, but not as bad as, say, turning to Robert Snodgrass as the answer to your January problems.

Anyway, both Arnautovic and his Portuguese doppelgänger are tall, strong and quick wide forwards who have been converted into central strikers and both possess unusual gifts for someone in the position. Now let's get that into perspective - Ronaldo has almost refined the role of what a central striker looks like, so to compare him directly with a player in the bottom half of the Premier League after a good game away at Huddersfield would be well Tim Sherwood.

But what my friend was getting at, was more that we have abandoned the traditional demands of our strikers and are instead playing a very different way. Arnautovic is certainly strong enough to compete for balls and do the traditional grunt work of a striker, but where we really want to get him is isolated with defenders so he can run at them and beyond them. In a similar style to Ronaldo, if nowhere near the same level, we are asking him to use his physicality to lead counter attacks and stretch teams.

Take our last goal for example. That is not a goal that can be scored unless he has the pace, skill and power to get to the ball and then bulldoze into the area. None of our other players could have done that and it is a huge feather in the caps of Moyes and his coaching staff that they have engineered this development.

And yes, that third goal.

When did you last see us play like that? I can't remember a move of that ilk since the Carlton Cole screamer at Wigan, and while we played well in that 2015-16 season, we haven't mustered up anything that good since moving to the London Stadium. What was encouraging was that the goal actually showcased exactly what you want from a team in our situation. We pressed high, won the ball back, our midfielders shuffled it around until finding Arnautovic in space and a stepover later Lanzini was showing Chicharito what he's missing. A perfect goal on a perfect day.

***

"This is a tale of two city situations, a mutual appreciation 

Away from narrow preconception"

- Super Furry Animals, "Juxtaposed With U"

Which brings me to our transfer window. I'm not necessarily climbing the walls at the lack of activity, because the team's resurgence has lessened the threat of relegation considerably and if they can finish the month unbeaten we should be in full ascent up the side of Mt Mediocrity. An unheard of state of affairs when Brighton were pulling us to pieces all those weeks ago.

That being said, I think we need players still, but I'm starting to develop a weird, zen like faith in Moyes' ability to mine points from the most unpromising of situations. In the same way that when Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle came out and suddenly they could all fight like Neo from The Matrix without any explanation for it, I feel the same way about Moyes. I don't know what he's doing, or why it's happening but let's just go with it.

That West Ham back three

But the strangest rumour abounding about West Ham at the moment is the one linking Andy Carroll to Chelsea. When this emerged initially I assumed it was simply the sound of column inches being desperately filled or Carroll's agent angling for a new deal and overshooting the runway a little bit, but now it refuses to die down.

Like most Hammers fans I'd be prepared to drive him over there myself except I don't own an ambulance and I can't be doing with him pulling a hamstring turning over the radio when we hit traffic on the M25. I know plenty might keep him, but he's a disruptive force to the team purely because he confuses how we want to play. Send him West and let Conte sort that out, and if we get Batshuayi back in exchange then I could certainly live with that. Besides, the Champions League deserves to see Andy Carroll. They've had it too easy for too long, with their perfectly manicured pitches and slick passing football and now it's time for their Hawaiian Missile Warning. Here comes General Zod, Europe. Prepare to kneel.

Big Andy - Stick that up yer bleeding San Siro

But tragically, the other January tale that I seem to be hearing on repeat is the story of us trying to get Robert Snodgrass back from his loan spell. Not content with slagging him off for a year, and ignoring the not insignificant question about where he would play in this line up - it is really twisting my melon that after their fucking shambles of a transfer window this time last year, these dickheads have searched every inch of the globe, scanned YouTube into the wee hours and decided that the answer to their problems is.....the same guy that they signed last year and didn't know how to utilise. 

Never change West Ham. I love you. You're perfect. 

*I'm sorry this one was late and indeed was written as we were playing Shrewsbury. Life gets in the way sometimes. Still, chapeau Reece Burke. 

Spurs 1 - 1 West Ham (And Other Ramblings)

"And your God is only a catapult, waiting for the right time to let you go

Into the unknown, just to watch you hold your breath

Yeah, and you surrender your fortress"

- The War on Drugs, "Arms Like Boulders"

Dreams aren’t supposed to look like this. Stalwart defending, cheering brief moments of possession, holding midfielders channeling Bobby Charlton, and all the while clinging grimly to a point as though it were a life float chucked overboard into a tumultuous, stormy sea. But there you go – welcome to the new normal in the Premier League, where those who have orchestrated two decades of inequity are finally seeing the fruits of their labour being beamed into billions of homes all round the world. Here you go Asia and America, it's the best league in the world! Except we made these two teams play 48 hours ago so please don’t ask for entertainment – that wouldn’t be fair. 

Niche reference alert. More ahead too. 

Of course, there was plenty of entertainment on display last night if you dream in claret and blue and didn’t mind getting behind the sofa for large swathes of the action. Missing Cresswell, Antonio and crucially, Arnautovic, we were reduced to an extended exercise of attack versus defence anchored around a supreme performance from our back three, with only a brief pause for respite as Pedro Obiang scored the best goal that Wembley will see this season.

Perhaps in an alternate reality we would have lost this game by bucketloads. Maybe Harry Kane would have converted one of those myriad half chances into a goal with some typical opportunistic brilliance and, forced to chase the game, we would have been picked apart at will by a counterattacking Spurs team. But, even allowing for Andre Ayew, alternate dimensions don’t exist and thus we only have to concern ourselves with this one, and here we defended resolutely and with no little courage to grind out another draw. Another point. Another inch on a road to safety that none of us can believe we are actually travelling once again.

In the end, games such as this will fade from the memory and become little more than footnotes in yet another lost season of turgid struggle. But right here and now, in the middle of a relegation battle that sees nine teams within five points of each other, this point looks like a precious jewel. Add to that the satisfaction of slamming the brakes on another Spurs season, and leaving Wembley undefeated for a second time this season, it's hard to argue that this wasn't a pretty good night all round.

***

"All this talk of getting old

It's getting me down"

- The Verve, "The Drugs Don't Work"

Now that the dust has settled on a Christmas league programme that required us to play four games in thirteen days, it is possible to look back and assess how well we have fared over a crucial, but heavily demanding period of the season. All things considered, a return of a win, a loss and two draws is reasonable, even if the swings in fortune during that run were fairly sizeable. While we may bemoan Andre Ayew going full Diana Ross and Bobby Madley's self importance, we are also indebted to Asmir Begovic's sudden bouts of vertigo and Andy Carroll suddenly discovering he had a functioning right foot. It could have been better, it could have been worse. 123 years of history summed up in that one sentence.

How many shots have we had Zaba?

Given the compressed nature of the schedule, one might have expected David Moyes to ring the changes in order to keep his team fresh, but the reality is that he simply doesn't have the personnel available to do that effectively. The bench for this match featured £35m of strikers who don't fit our style of play, four kids without a league appearance between them, a travelling acrobat, a badger, a life size cut out of Keita Balde, and of course Joe Hart, taking up a massive part of our weekly wage budget because he is the best keeper David Sullivan has ever worked with.

So, Moyes rotated where he could - in central defence and up front - and then said a couple of Hail Mary's for the rest. Below is a table from today's Telegraph which gives an interesting breakdown of the number of changes made by each team over Christmas, and how many injuries they each suffered. We lead the latter category, naturally, and if we do it for a 50th consecutive year in 2019 we get to keep Jack Wilshere as a prize. 

Team	Changes in 4 games	Injuries sustained	Points won
Arsenal	7	4	6
Bournemouth	8	4	5
Brighton	12	1	5
Burnley	2	3	2
Chelsea	10	1	8
Crystal Palace	8	5	5
Everton	14	2	2
Huddersfield	12	2	3
Leicester	11	4	4
Liverpool	16	4	10
Man City	11	4	10
Man Utd	10	4	6
Newcastle	17	1	7
Southampton	11	3	2
Stoke	12	2	4
Swansea	10	4	4
Spurs	9	3	10
Watford	6	2	3
West Brom	8	4	2
West Ham	7	6	5

Each team has their own approach, but our low rotation policy in theory should have ensured some consistency of performance. In reality, things didn’t pan out that way and it is instructive to see that Newcastle did so well having rotated heavily. Their ability to mix and match with lots of average players of roughly the same ability served them in good stead, whereas Moyes has neither the depth in numbers or talent to do that. At the top end of our squad – Lanzini, Arnautovic – we have much better players than our rivals, but most of the team are not at that level, and furthermore, ours is the second oldest squad in the division. 

Evidently, that lack of mobility and athleticism really shows up when we play lots of games in quick succession like this. Given all of that, a five point return will suffice for now, primarily as it gives us some breathing space over West Brom and Swansea, and helped draw struggling teams like Southampton and Stoke back into the scrap. That said, this period was mainly about surviving intact to take on our vital January fixtures. 

Many of you may disagree, but the rightful casualty of all of this will probably will be our FA Cup run. The brutal reality is that none of the players who played in these two matches should appear on Sunday, because the risk of injury is so much greater when players are fatigued. Unfortunately, because of the aforementioned shallow squad depth we don’t have the quality of reserves to call upon to realistically challenge an upwardly mobile lower league side like Shrewsbury. That’s an embarrassing admission for any Premier League team to make, but as we discovered at Nottingham Forest a few years ago, the gap between Premier League Under 23 teams and good lower league sides is pretty big.

So, if I was Moyes, I would be apologising to those fans travelling on Sunday, forcing the club to subsidise their travel or tickets or buying them a fucking burger or something to prove they aren’t all soul sucking vampires, and then acceding to the wishes of those who have been demanding game time for the untried likes of Martinez, Quina, Haksabanovic and Makasi. I understand those who make the argument that for a club like us, the only thing we have is the chance of a cup victory, and indeed I agree with it. But there is an underlying reality to our situation which also has to be considered, which is that we have a far higher chance of being relegated – about 25% on present bookmaker odds – than we do of winning the cup.

Take it, I'm going to win the FA Cup!

Therefore, when people say that they would happily accept relegation if we were to win a trophy, they are operating in a fantasy world. That would be like me saying I would happily accept my house being repossessed if I took my mortgage money and sunk it into lottery tickets and won. What this ignores is the far more likely option that I lose the house and don’t win the lottery. None of which is to say that I want us to lose on Sunday, but if we win we will only face this dilemma again in the next round when our match would take place just before a five day spell when we face a home game with Palace and a trip to Brighton. Picking up Premier League points from those games is more important to the club than a fourth round cup game. I know plenty will disagree, but maybe check in with a Wigan fan before you make up your mind fully. In summary, I think Moyes’ priority this weekend is to preserve a team to get some points at Huddersfield, and our righteous anger about that should be directed at the idiots who assembled this ageing squad and thought it could survive a season as unrelentingly demanding as this one, which has been compressed to give England a longer preparation period for the World Cup. 

***

"I sing the song because I love the man

I know that some of you don't understand"

- Neil Young, "The Needle and the Damage Done"

On which note, it seems only fitting to actually look at what happened here in more detail, because whatever the situation, this is a fine result and one that few teams will match this season. Unlike Slaven Bilic, who regularly troubled Spurs by pressing them in their own high intensity style, and frequently found them wanting in the middle of the park, Moyes instead chose to retreat into a defensive shell and invite them on. 

Where the likes of Stoke and Southampton were torn apart on their recent trips to Wembley, we were instead beautifully compact and hard to break down. We dropped so deep we were almost subterranean, forcing Spurs to play in front of us, and shorn of the ability to hit us on the counter attack and with no space for Christian Eriksen, the hosts looked thoroughly uninspired. The cost of this approach was that we almost entirely gave up on attacking, and we were noticeably abysmal when in possession, with Javier Hernandez the poster boy for receiving the ball and then doing nothing other than trying to win free kicks with it. The Mexican was so bad here I thought I was at a seance and Mike Newell had turned up to haunt me. 

On the other hand, our back three were masterful, with Angelo Ogbonna outstanding again, and Declan Rice turning in the kind of mature, composed performances that we assumed we were getting when we spent £8m on Jose Fonte this time last year. I have been agnostic on the youngster up until now, but he has turned my head firmly with this display. It is incredibly rare to see teenagers looking this assured at this level. Alongside him Pablo Zabaleta and Arthur Masuaku did just enough to keep things on an even keel, even if the former was heavily indebted to some excellent cover work by Cheikhou Kouyate to manage the dynamite Heung Min Son. Winston Reid did not get injured. 

Everything about this picture is brilliant

Reading between the lines after the game, it seems that Moyes wanted the team to be more offensive but with no way of getting up the pitch this kind of performance was perhaps inevitable. The value of an Antonio or Sakho type player was never more evident than this game, as every clearance was returned back with interest, and Spurs must have been sorely tempted to play rush goalie, so unthreatening were we. After an hour Moyes gave up on Hernandez proving the broken clock theory correct and stuck on Andre Ayew, who did more jogging on than the Mexican managed all day. After just six minutes on the pitch, the Ghanaian pushed Spurs back with some good running, and the ball was eventually recycled back to Pedro Obiang some thirty yards from goal. Perhaps thinking that it was a bit embarrassing that we hadn't had a shot all day, the Spaniard advanced without any pressure on the ball from Spurs - to be fair, why would you - and smacked a thunderous, brilliant, joyful, rising drive into the top corner and had West Ham fans of a certain age yelling about traction engines. A moment to remind us to dream. 

Kouyate really should have doubled the lead not long after, when Obiang picked him out unmarked at the back post but the Senegal captain stooped for the header with all the enthusiasm of Anne Boleyn kneeling for the executioners axe and put it wide. It was to prove costly, as Spurs would snatch a point with just five minutes remaining when Son, their best player by a distance, smashed home a stunning long range effort of his own. I can't help but like Son and frequently have to try and forget that at the same time  we were signing Andy Carroll for £15m he was joining Bayer Leverkusen for €10m. Sigh.

Even allowing for bias it's hard not to say that Spurs deserved something from this game, but to have got as close as we did made it a tough pill to swallow, even if we'd have all taken a point - Allardyce style - before the game. There was even a doubt about the validity of the Spurs goal as Aurier looked to have fouled Lanzini in the build up, but Moyes was unconvinced after the game so I won't die on that particular hill. The Caley Graphics shot map above tells some, but not all, of the story as that Spurs xG was more a product of having loads of half chances rather than a few very good ones. This was death by a thousand blocked shots. By contrast, we actually created the two best chances of the game for Kouyate and later for Ayew. It might seem counter intuitive, but if you were to ask Pochettino if he wanted to replay this game and swap chances with us, he might actually take it as you'd imagine Kane and Alli would do better with those chances than we did.

Helpfully, Mike Dean also didn't award penalties to Spurs for a couple of shouts in the second half. Both involved Dele Alli and therefore immediately demand greater scrutiny given his propensity for falling over like he's in an episode of Miranda. The first was a challenge with Reid that I don't think could ever have been given, and the second involved Adrian clattering him when he'd headed over after an offside Kane had flicked on. That was a better shout, but I'm not yet ready to live in a world where players are going to be punished for punching Dele Alli in the head. After the game Tim Sherwood said he thought both were penalties, thus confirming that Dean was correct not to award them. 

***

"And all the politicians making crazy sounds

And everybody putting everybody else down"

- The Velvet Underground, "Heroin"

Long after the game had finished, pundits were still debating the recent trend of lower rung Premier League teams "parking the bus" when faced with the Top Six. Leaving aside for a moment that the greatest exponent of this is at Old Trafford, the best summary I've found was this article by Jonathan Wilson in the Guardian. Wilson correctly identifies that teams like us have been willing to cede possession at historic rates, with the sole aim of keeping games tight and then striking on the break. Part of this stems from watching Leicester do it brilliantly for an entire season, and win the league, although it must be said that we have none of their pace. Watching Hernandez try and outpace Sanchez after intercepting a misplaced pass on the halfway line here was like watching the tortoise and the hare if the tortoise gave up halfway through and started sulking. Oh, for some of these players who can play game after game at such high intensity and mysteriously never get injured.

Hernandez races away from the Spurs defence

Amid the indignation contained in that article from the likes of Jamie Carragher and Gary Neville is a failure from them to properly address exactly why this has happened. When money is so integral to the game, and shared so unevenly around the sport, it is hardly surprising that it has an effect far beyond the company accounts. Because the English game does not properly fund lower league football, it means that the cost of dropping out of the Premier League is disproportionately severe and thus even ludicrously well funded but appallingly run teams like West Ham will turn in embarrassingly defensive shows like this in order to preserve that status. 

Doubling the problems for relegation threatened teams is the fact that those at the top have revenue streams they cannot access. Champions League teams take home prize money, or more accurately UEFA subsidies, each year that push them ever further from the rest of the pack, and subsequently have commercial opportunities that the rest can only dream of. With that inequality has come a growing acceptance from everyone else that trying to live with these teams is a bit of a waste of time, and we are now at a stage where the cup competitions can't compete with the primacy of the league, as I've outlined above, and teams like us dream of finishing sixth. 

Suddenly, the likes of Carragher and Neville are upset by this, because they want their armchair fans to be entertained. It is telling however, that neither of them ever left the sweet embrace of such privilege during their playing careers, preferring to remain where they had every advantage and never had to pick and choose which competitions to attack, or had to contend with their team mates being tapped up like Virgil Van Dijk.

Yet, including Spurs in this is a little unfair, as they have made their way into that elite tier by actually buying and developing players. Spending £100m on Romelu Lukaku isn't a difficult thing to do. Growing Harry Kane or spotting Dele Alli actually is. That said, they have commercial revenue streams that the likes of Burnley will never have, and still joined their new peers in demanding a greater share of the league television money last month. It didn't take long for them to get their snout firmly into the trough.

Every year that passes without any attempt to address these discrepancies is a further dagger into the heart of the league as a competitive entity. The likes of Carragher and Neville can't complain about negative small teams unless they also support some or all the possible solutions. So let's hear them advocating for greater revenue sharing, or salary caps, or luxury taxes, or squad size restrictions, or limits on loans, or a draft of young players left off those restricted squads, or liquidating Chelsea or any other suggestion that would make the game fairer, and by extension more entertaining.

Sadly, that will never happen and such egalitarian notions will remain the sole preserve of the dreamers on the second page of the Match of the Day league table. It just feels a bit of a pisstake to hoover up all of the money in the game, steal all the best players from small clubs, swipe up the best managers and then call us names while they're doing it. To Huddersfield, Swansea, Bournemouth and, sadly, unbelievably, West Ham, I say...carry on.

Once more for luck? Oh, go on then