Arsenal 4 - 1 West Ham (And Other Ramblings)

"Hey! Wait! I've got a new complaint"

- Nirvana, "Heart Shaped Box"

I had a curious experience watching this game. I now coach my daughter's under 10 team - with a heavy focus on shot locations, Expected Goals and fun, but mainly shot locations - and we had a game at 1pm. So I duly recorded this match, avoided my heavily vibrating phone, and watched the game with a two hour delay, and no social media echo chamber to influence my thoughts. 

And after eighty minutes I was bordering on happy. Not only had we thoroughly dominated the first half, but after conceding an epically shit opening goal, we deservedly hauled ourselves back into the game with a thrilling equaliser from Marko Arnautovic. The flaws in the performance were obvious, and the unbalanced, lopsided squad was badly exposed at times, but there was a sense of resilience and purpose to our play that was never present under Slaven Bilic this season. If nothing else, we were finally throwing some punches back, and doing it all on a day that the rest of the world was determined would be a farewell party for Arsene Wenger. 

And then Declan Rice ducked. 

Farewell Arsene - don't suppose we could interest you in a flat in Hackney Wick?

Is it possible to lose a game of football by four goals to one and feel you were unlucky? If so, then this was it. Arsenal opened the scoring when Aaron Cresswell got close to Nacho Monreal at a corner in the same way that Australia is close to New Zealand, and the Spaniard duly took advantage. His well struck volley actually went just inside our post which threatened to open up the old debate about whether teams should have a man on the posts at corners. I say "threatened" because we actually had Arthur Masuaku stood right there up until the exact second the ball went in. The problem is that such prosaic notions as stopping shots hit straight at him are not Arthur's metier. 

Instead, Arthur chose this moment to announce his support for the thinking of the French Marxist philosopher, Paul Lafargue. Big Paul, as I imagine he was known to his friends, lived an eventful late nineteenth century life before penning the renowned essay "The Right to Be Lazy" in 1880. This would prove an influential document for both European Marxists and West Ham squads through the years. And so, as Monreal's shot arrowed towards young Arthur, there followed this exchange:

ARTHUR MASUAKU

(jumping inexplicably to one side)

The proletariat, betraying its instincts, despising its historic mission, has let itself be perverted by the dogma of work. Rude and terrible has been its punishment!

JOE HART

Yeah, that geezer killed himself, Arthur.

And thus we went one down having spent most of the game up to that point being the side looking most likely to score. That's not to say that we were playing particularly well, but we simply exploited the complete inability of any of Arsenal's hopeless defenders to cope with balls over their heads. Thus, a succession of well directed long passes sought out Arnautovic, who used his pace and power to get into a number of dangerous positions. Unfortunately, none led to a goal, but it was an effective tactic in the circumstance, and rather more well thought out than some fans seemed to have given credit for. 

Yet, the problem with our current side is that it is a Jenga column of a team. Removing something from one location and replacing it further up just weakens the foundations completely. And so it was that Manuel Lanzini and, to a far lesser degree, Javier Hernandez arrived to shift momentum, only to leave gaps that would be mercilessly exposed by Arsenal as the light was dying. 

That we were playing at The Emirates today served only to highlight those flaws. The glorious sunlight couldn't help but transport us back those two short seasons to the Dimitri Payet inspired side who destroyed Arsenal on opening day in 2015. That was a side who were set up to defend and then launch spring loaded counter attacks that primarily flowed through our nascent superstar, but which were augmented by the excellent midfield cover of Reece Oxford and the ceaseless running of Diafra Sakho. All are gone now, their footballing gravestones the series of inadequate men brought in to replace them. No matter what you think about this game, the contrast between then and now was dragged out into the bleached sunlight today and paraded for all the world to see. Hubris, thy name is West Ham. 

***

"Now you're at the wheel, tell me how,

How does it feel? So good to have equalised"

- The Stone Roses, "Waterfall"

Before we drop too deeply into our traditional H List inspired malaise, let's just take a moment to enjoy the simple art of goalscoring. Has there been a more satisfying goal this season than Arnautovic's equaliser? Arsenal came at us after half time, and our complete inability to retain possession meant we couldn't get out of own half, but there was still some lingering sense that if we could ride out the barrage we might yet survive. And then after Arthur's "after you" there was that crushing sense of inevitability as another promising start was about to be frittered away. Another war lost for the sake of a stray bullet.

Love the man, bemused by the hair

On some days, you can sense a goal coming in the same way you can feel an oncoming storm. Imperceptible changes and shifts in pressure let us know that something is happening far off in the distance. A dark cloud, a chill breeze, a shot here, a cross there, on come the substitutes and up go the umbrellas. 

Well, that wasn't happening here. 

Lanzini and Hernandez arrived and more men went forward. It left us terrifyingly open at the back, and highlighted even more starkly, the total absence of defensive midfield cover in this side. But with men pushed forward we had a chance to keep a few second balls alive and from one such piece of broken play, Lanzini flicked through to a malingering Arnautovic who turned and drilled home a superb equaliser.

It was one of those perfect moments when it's just possible to forget everything else and live, there and then, in the sheer joy of the present. We have the worst owners in the Premier League, a terrible, ageing squad, a ground we all hate, and a schism the width of a running track between our supporters. In theory, we shouldn't, and indeed can't, compete with Arsenal. But those things are not football. They are paraphernalia. Those things inform and influence but they are not the game.

For the game is beautiful and brutal and unfair and glorious, and as our moody Austrian picked up that half chance and turned on his weaker foot and displayed supreme technique to rifle home a half chance, generating that satisfying snare drum sound as it hit the base of the net, well...well, then we were experiencing the joy of all life.

This season, hell the last two years, have been too short of those grab-your-mates-arm, fuckinghavethat, hairs on the neck, fall forward two rows, "Christ is this really happening" kind of moments. And the very fact that I feel obliged to write a section solely about the goal in a 4-1 defeat is the perfect embodiment of why Sullivan and Gold need to move on. It's like being pleased that your Grand National horse has their saddle on the right way round, immediately before they smash into Becher's  Brook.

So yes, I shall always think fondly of the time that Arnie punched back at The Emirates and brought the music to a sudden, record scratch halt at Wenger's farewell party. It's sad that it's come to this, but come to this it has.

And for twenty minutes thereafter, I thought I was watching our best away performance of the season.

And then Declan Rice ducked.

***

"If the businessmen will drink my blood, like the kids in art school said they would

Then I guess I'll just begin again"

- Arcade Fire, "Ready To Start"

As frustrating as this game turned out to be, I'm not sure what people were truly expecting. Arsenal haven't lost at home to anyone outside the Top Six all season, and with it being the beginning of Wenger's long goodbye, we continued our proud unbeaten 123 year run of being Britain's best party guests. Joffrey should have invited us to his wedding.

They've spent how much on Joe Hart?

But after all this, I don't know how many more times I can go to the well. Chicharito as the answer? He had ten touches after he came on and did nothing. He can't play on his own up top, and if we play with any more than one forward we expose our wildly underpowered midfield, and indeed, one thing that struck me on Sunday was how few of our players are good on both sides of the ball.

The ones who can attack are non-contributors defensively, our midfielders either don't have the legs (Noble), have legs but possibly not their own (Kouyate) or are a footballing graveyard where good moves go to die (Fernandes). The best is obviously Lanzini, who leads the high press well but shouldn't be asked to do too much more. Joao Mario is obviously a decent player who probably needs some time to adapt to English football, and is too rich for our blood. That said, his last 27 corners have all hit the first man so he is at least adapting to some West Ham traditions well enough.

So as much as I want a more adventurous, younger, more mobile, more tactically fluid side, I also accept that Moyes can't possibly be expected to extract that from his current squad. Anyone demanding a 4-4-2 has to acknowledge that the wide players in that formation have to defend. Therefore, you might pick Masuaku and Fernandes to do that, and suddenly you have Mario and Lanzini on the bench, and four at the back and Brighton are beating you 3-0 at home.

It's also sadly true that we have no options in central midfield. Noble was excellent here but needs younger, more mobile legs around him. Fernandes fits that bill, but suffers from the unfortunate drawback of not being able to play football, while Cheikhou Kouyate has declined so much I am going to nickname him "Sterling".

Whatever way I slice it, I find an imperfect squad yielding an imperfect team. It's all well and good to demand a more attacking team but when we commit more forward we end up shipping goals by the boatload, not helped by a goalkeeping situation whereby we'd be better off if we spliced our two options together and had one dive one way and the other take the opposite side.

But much of the issue with how fans feels seems to me to be a classic case of fans failing to appraise the evidence of their eyes and instead thinking in emotional terms of how they remember the players. The problem with that is that players decline so rapidly and so imperceptibly that it is almost impossible for fans to notice when we actually see them play so fleetingly. One of the great tricks of Sir Alex Ferguson's tenure at Manchester United was his ability to sell players at the height of their powers, or right at the start of their decline. Beckham, Stam, van Nistelrooy, Ince and Cole were all moved on when it seemed they had something left to give, but were on the wrong side of the ageing curve.

Ask yourself when was the last time we did that? It's rare for us, primarily because we are usually buying those types of players, but also because as a club we have developed a fear of selling, when it would perhaps be wise to accept that some sales can actually be doubly useful because you can clear out declining players and get money back for them. The trick is knowing that they are declining before everybody else does. An analytics department would be useful here.

As it stands now, I would say that Kouyate is one such type. Other clubs may see him as being young enough to reclaim but I'd be prepared to take that risk. Cresswell might fit that description too, and Arnautovic probably does as well, although the club can't sell one of their few usable players. Ultimately we would have to trust the club to make that assessment because that institutional knowledge is critical - we know nothing of who is injured, who is declining physically, or who is becoming less productive as a result of minor tactical adjustments the manager wants to make. Ogbonna is a good example of a player who seemed lost and now should win Hammer of the Year, after some actual honest-to-God coaching.

My broader point is that when fans demand that the likes of Hernandez play more regularly, you can't just do that in a vacuum. It's not enough to argue that he has to start because he "guarantees goals", when all our sports science numbers might suggest he has lost a yard in pace, or Moyes has identified that a penalty box striker isn't much use for a team who don't get in the box very much. I'm just throwing those out there as possible reasons, but my broader point is that all of this stuff is linked and relevant. The fact that he was a good player when he was 26 is not.

***

"Feel the sunshine on your face, it's in a computer now

Gone are the future, way out in space"

- Blur, "Out of Time"

Fuck this descent into misery. Let's predict the future!

MAY 2018

We flirt with relegation by losing to Leicester but salvage it with a win over Manchester United at the London Stadium. We finish the season up with a 0-0 draw with Everton that is so bad it leads to Jeremy Corbyn proposing to renationalise football. 

With the season over the club announce David Moyes on a three year contract having publicly courted Arsene Wenger until he eventually emigrates to stop David Sullivan calling him. This appointment will ensure stability for around ten months before people start talking about an extension. When asked how the search for a new Head of Recruitment is going, Sullivan denies all knowledge of such a vacancy. He then announces that he and Jack will be attending the World Cup in Russia. 

JUNE 2018

It's season ticket renewal time! Benzema! Bacca! Rodriguez! Welbeck! 

You renew your season ticket, because you're an idiot.

We promptly sign Peter Crouch from relegated Stoke and Charlie Austin's one working knee from Southampton. David Gold gives a radio interview where he states that Financial Fair Play rules make it very difficult to bring anyone else in. Meanwhile, Burnley sign James Ward-Prowse for £30m.

England go out of the World Cup to Senegal. We are linked with every player having a good tournament for a minnow. This is fine, as those guys are always good signings. 

JULY 2018

We sign four players from Panama and Tunisia after they impress in their countries successful campaigns. In order to make this work we sell twelve players, including Jordan Hugill to Preston for £4m. That's how it works. 

AUGUST 2018

We eschew money spinning, useful tours to the US or Asia and instead play three games in Slovenia against Swedish amateur teams. We draw all three. Everything is fine. Only Declan Rice from the first team is actually doing any training, as the others are all either in traction after the World Cup, or on holiday in Mexico.

We open the season with a 6-1 defeat at Manchester City. Moyes and the players describe it as a good run out, leading me to wonder if they are aware the season has started. Newly promoted Wolves win 3-0 at the London Stadium before we get the show on the road with a 1-1 draw at Cardiff. 

Twelve minutes after the transfer window closes, Manuel Lanzini does his knee. 

SEPTEMBER 2018

David Sullivan is busy scouring the globe for out of contract players who we can sign as we finally get a win at home to Swansea with a late Noble penalty. Everyone would be feeling a bit down about our poor start but thankfully we have those flags around the pitch before matches. 

That architect finally gets round to looking at the possibility of redesigning the stadium. His report is one page long and contains two words. 

OCTOBER 2018

The new signings aren't working out brilliantly and are all on the bench, while Austin is in America trying to buy a new knee. James Collins and Pablo Zabaleta are our centre back pairing as we grab an unlikely win at Brighton, who fire Chris Hughton out of shame. 

Michail Antonio returns in the home draw with Newcastle where he nearly lasts to half time before injuring his hamstring. Gary Lewin pronounces himself happy with this progress. Crouch equalises with a minute to go and does the robot and then does a funny Tweet. We lose in the EFL Cup to, oh I don't fucking know, Swindon. 

NOVEMBER 2018

Everybody is injured. There are bodies everywhere. The Club release a statement referencing their unprecedented injury crisis for the tenth straight year.  Mired in the bottom three, Sullivan gives a well thought out, superbly judged interview to The Guardian announcing that if we can just get through to January we can fix it all then, and that Moyes was probably the wrong appointment but nobody else would come. 

We are somehow playing Arsenal, Spurs, Chelsea, Man Utd and Liverpool in consecutive games. We lose them all except for Spurs, obviously, which buys Moyes an extra six months in the role. 

DECEMBER 2018

Karren Brady launches her Christmas cookbook, a range of specialist leggings for businesswomen and an album of corporate jingles. She launches this at 8pm on ITV on a Wednesday when we are gaining a surprising win at Fulham. 

We are away on Boxing Day, which is a coincidence, and lose 5-0 at Everton. We do at least welcome back Andy Carroll who tore his Achilles Tendon in the summer doing the Macarena in Tenerife. He plays 17 minutes and concedes 12 fouls. 

JANUARY 2019

Everything is fine! We win all our league games this month as our unprecedented injury crisis that we have every year finally abates. Austin scores four in four, including the winner at Newcastle where away fans now watch the game from a hot air balloon attached to the top of the stand. 

The Mike Ashley Stand

We win our 3rd Round Cup game at Bury live on the BBC who couldn't look any more unhappy about it. Our reward is an away tie at Manchester City. 

With the team surging to 12th and our injured players on the mend, Sullivan announces that no dickhead buys any players in January and instead announces a couple of loans for players who were top drawer on FIFA '15. Neither ever play for West Ham but cost the club £800,000 in agent's fees. This is fine.

FEBRUARY 2019

Doctors discover that Austin's knee is made entirely of chewing gum and he is ruled out for the season. This isn't an issue as Carroll is now returned from a back injury he sustained attempting to pick up a concrete bollard on a team night out in Dubai. 

We lose 5-1 at Manchester City in the fourth round of the Cup, which everybody agrees is a big improvement on the opening day game. The match is played at 10pm on a Saturday night for overseas television audiences. British rail services are so good that some West Ham fans don't get home until March. 

The Annual Accounts are released. The club made a profit of £76m. Nemanja Vidic signs as a free agent to cover for the injured James Collins. 

MARCH 2019

The East Stand at the London Stadium falls down in the middle of the night. It turns out that building a stadium for a two week event and then fixing it up with sellotape and Prittstick is sub optimal. As the Directors aren't in this stand they don't give a shit and agree to meet with the landlord at the end of the season to resolve the issue. 

For his part the Mayor says that he can't be held responsible for things like stands falling down and suggests that West Ham pay £140m to replace it. The case ends up in court at a cost of £25m in legal fees. The Mayor agrees to rebuild the stand, but fifteen feet further back. Sullivan agrees. We beat Wolves 4-1 in our annual "where the fuck did that come from?" away performance. 

APRIL 2019

We avert relegation for another year with two home victories over Burnley and Leicester. Both games finish 1-0 and contravene the Trades Description Act. 

Sullivan gives a well thought out, superbly judged interview to Sky Sports announcing that never again will the Club be in this precarious position and that if we can just get through to the next transfer window then everything can be resolved. In the background David Moyes can be heard sobbing. 

Meanwhile, West Ham Ladies have gone the season unbeaten. 

MAY 2019

We finish 15th.

It's season ticket renewal time! Ribery! Giroud! Bale! Sturridge!

You renew your season ticket, because you're an idiot...

West Ham 1 - 1 Stoke (And Other Ramblings)

"Well, 'round here baby

I've learned you get what you can get"

- Bruce Springsteen, "Tougher Than The Rest"

Not every win comes in the form of a victory. On a night where we had the contemporaneous sense of wild joy at a late equaliser, and coursing disappointment at the failure to truly separate ourselves from the relegation quagmire, it is worth noting that the main success here was what we did to our opposition rather than anything we did for ourselves. 

After this game, we sit with a 3% chance of relegation according to the folks at FiveThirtyEight. Football games aren't played on hard drives, of course, but it's comforting to know that the nerds have trained their gaze elsewhere, even though you do get the sense that a 3% relegation shot could be a very "hold my beer" moment for a kamikaze club such as ourselves. By comforting comparison, however, Stoke have a 93% chance of going down, which is the kind of thing you would generally only write about members of the Trump administration. 

Chicharito wins "Best Gladiator Impression"

But in truth, these are the amnesiac nights of the football season. Consigned almost immediately to the long term memory and only recalled years later when someone reminds you of the time our Vice Chairman once advised everybody to watch her new show on ITV and forgot we were playing at the same time.

These are the least glamorous inches on the mediocre road to safety that we now seem to tread so routinely, with the honourable exception of the 2015-16 season. These are the points that are so necessary for survival and simultaneously so damaging to the notion that this club is going anywhere soon. It's not even that we played that badly, and in fact it might be the opposite; we played reasonably well but still didn't have the guile or craft to put away a side who are deservedly going to be relegated.

It's fine to respect the point, and I doubt that many fans are struggling to see the bigger picture here. Stay above the stragglers and get through to the next transfer window when everything will be magically resolved by the people who messed up the last five. This time next year, Rodders.

But I wonder if there isn't a fatigue setting in among the fanbase. The underwhelmed reaction to this point, and the generally directionless nature of the club has lent the place an air of terminal decline. We will survive this year due to the bottom half of the Premier League being as good as that Robbie Williams Rat Pack album, but it's not fooling anyone anymore. We can only limp along for so long before one day taking a permanent stumble, especially when almost every lower league club is now run better than us.

We are in dire need of a change.

***

"And I know, and you know it too, that a love like ours is terrible news

But that won't stop me cryin', no that won't stop me cryin' over you"

- She and Him, "Thieves"

Which brings me neatly to David Moyes. 

Slaven Bilic took just 9 points from his 11 games this season which would have put him on pace for a 31 point season. That is not good. I looked it up. 

Moyes, meanwhile, has presided over 22 games and swept up 24 points. Over a full season, that would give us 41 points and a nice relegation battle to fret over and ultimately win. This is an imperfect and only minimally useful comparison because of the nuance involved but it does at least highlight that Bilic was woeful this season. It is also unfair on Moyes because Bilic had five transfer windows to build his own team and used them to construct the second oldest squad in the division. Moyes has had one window during which he got drunk, went to Preston with £10m and woke up with Jordan Hugill in his squad. We've all been there. 

I find the nostalgic pining for Bilic baffling on many levels, and I haven't even got into comparing the difficulty of their respective fixtures, but let's just say I think that they almost had to fire Bilic before we went to Man City just to stop us being the first ever Premier League team to concede ten goals. 

Kept it in single figures, lads!

But being better than Bilic isn't really the point here. The question is whether Moyes would actually be a good appointment or not, and that's a more difficult query to answer. I think most fans are starting to wake up to the fact that the biggest issue with the Premier League is not a reliance on foreign managers, but the endless fascination with mediocre British types. This is probably a little unfair on Moyes as he has been demonstrably better than the likes of Pulis, Allardyce and Pardew throughout his career, but that's the perception of him now. A stolid, average manager for middle of the road clubs. Be still our beating hearts. 

And the wider context is that West Ham is currently a febrile, uncertain beast. The board are despised for sins both imagined and real, and while the Directors presumably crave a boring, steady season where we bounce around in eleventh all year, the truth is that they probably need something more to regain some of what has been lost. And Moyes is not that. He would be a Roundhead appointment for what is currently - rightly or wrongly - a Cavalier fanbase. 

Fans want to dream. West Ham is ripe for a generational change and never has a club been more ready for a visionary manager to arrive and sweep all before him. We're sick of looking at Pochettino working the oracle at Spurs, as their impressive new stadium springs up around them, and wondering why it's not us. Here we are with 50,000 season ticket holders, the best catchment area for youth players in the country and an enormous wage bill and yet nobody at the club seems to have any idea how to harness all of that. There is such a person out there for us somewhere, but it requires judgement, knowledge and courage to go and find him, and none of these are qualities possessed by the decision makers at West Ham. 

Thus it comes to pass that Moyes is probably the best appointment for West Ham. He's here, he knows the squad, knows who he needs to keep and who to move on and, perhaps most importantly, seems prepared to take the job despite knowing that he would be working for the worst run club in the country. It's easy to dream on Nagelsmann, Favre, Tedesco and my secret love - hear me out here - Joachim Low, but those are not realistic. We are too badly run, with too tarnished a reputation to get such luminaries through our door. 

So, given such an ultra realistic appraisal I can find no better candidate than Moyes because I don't think anyone better would come. He's probably the best appointment we can make, and yet I strongly doubt he is actually a good choice. There is an outside chance that he might repeat his Everton trick and turn us into something decent over a long period of time, but even that chills the heart a little. We didn't move to this stadium for a rebuilding project. This was supposed be the culmination of a long term plan and instead we arrived at the restaurant for dinner and found out that the chef had forgotten to turn the oven on.

***

"Help me out of the life I lead

Remember the promise that you made"

- Cock Robin, "The Promise You Made"

Having said all that, I think Moyes would probably be a decent choice as Director of Football, except for the fact that this morning David Sullivan revealed he is now planning to renege on his promise to hire anyone for that role. Leaving aside for a moment the blunt force stupidity of allowing a job applicant to set the parameters of their position, it's a fascinating development. Sullivan made the promise under the duress of fan protests and the white hot focus of the national media. Everything he said about the role strongly suggested that he didn't understand it, although that's rather par for the course these days, but to go back on such a promise will only further cement his reputation as a liar.

In fairness to Sullivan his counter argument is that he never actually promised a Director of Football, but instead an "entirely new way of signing players". As far as I can tell this looks very much like the old way, where a Chief Scout - this used to be Tony Henry before he redefined the word "mayhem" - finds players and the manager signs off on them. Brilliant. There is no acknowledgement that a proper Director of Football would bring all sorts of other benefits to the club, because Sullivan doesn't understand what the role should entail.

What's particularly bemusing, is that having spent the season blaming Bilic for assembling this hopeless squad, he is now handing over the reins to allow Moyes the freedom to do exactly the same. If this is true we can all look forward to another squad constructed solely to meet the whim of one person, who is one six game winless run from losing his job, and with Sullivan having further destroyed what little credibility he has left with the fans. Oh well - I suppose that going back on such a well publicised concession to supporters would be a fairly significant "fuck you" to those who have questioned his leadership (ie: everyone), but it's a remarkable piece of backsliding from where we were just two weeks ago. Whatever your thoughts on the fan protests, it should be acknowledged that the toothpaste is well and truly out of that tube if the board are already comfortable enough to start rewriting history.

What's also magnificent about this is the timing, as it comes just days after Sullivan wrote an angry piece in the programme demanding that fans acknowledge that he has sanctioned far higher spending than "the so called experts" would have us believe, and then trotting out the biannual line about strengthening in the next transfer window, which by now should really be the club motto. Sullivan was keen to "dispel a myth" by writing the piece, although he wasn't so keen that he felt the need to include any actual numbers in there. The curious thing about all of this is that he appears not to realise that spending loads of money on a terrible team isn't actually a good thing.

I used to read stuff like this with a rising sense of anger. How could these useless charlatans have taken over my club and why aren't more people angrier about their incompetence? I still have that dull ache at the back of my mind, but it's been replaced somewhat by a more mystified feeling. I watch them now in the same way one watches a hopeless DIY'er. Like viewing a man changing his wiring while standing in a bucket of water, I no longer despair of the idiocy and instead marvel at the ignorance of it all. How are they still alive? Why is that ladder balancing on a beach ball? Why check a gas leak using a match for illumination? Is he really checking to see if that gun is loaded by peering down the barrel?

And David Sullivan did gaze with great pride upon his handiwork

I have said this before, so please excuse the repetition, but the biggest danger this club faces is apathy. Fans speak often about turning our back but that is usually just the post match disappointment talking. Come season ticket renewal time, when the sun is out and the red tops have been laced with false promises, it is never a chore to summon up enough misplaced faith to sign up once more. But this time feels a bit different. It's not so much that the team is bad - and it is very bad - but that there is so little for us to connect to as fans. The club has no vision, Upton Park has gone and been replaced imperfectly, and the people in charge didn't seem to care when fans were being threatened if they protested against them.

It's been a dismal season and I find it hard to believe that David Moyes is the right man to lift us out of that, even if I greatly admire some of what he has done. We need a Director of Football more than any other team around, and appointing one would at last have been a nod to the realities of the modern game and an admission that the era of running the team like we were in a DeLorean and it was 1983, were over. Instead, no. They took the barrel of that gun and aimed it squarely at their own feet.

Godspeed, David. I think you're going to need it.

***

"You say you saw him laughing, I hope it's true

I'd like to see it happen. I hope it's true."

- Belly, "Seal My Fate"

Even as this game was minutes from starting, our Karren was on Twitter urging people to watch her new show starting on ITV at the same time. It's called "Give It A Year" and involves her visiting struggling businesses and then returning a year later to see what progress they have made under her watchful eye. It is powered mainly by irony, presumably.

It sounds delightful because there is hardly anything that needs doing at West Ham and even though she earns just under a million quid a year for her role as Director in Charge of Not Listening To Fans, it's nice that Karren can stave off poverty by adding another string to her bow. I didn't see the show but apparently there is a bakery in Oxford who signed Robert Snodgrass and are now thriving, and a dressmakers in Carlisle who now wave loads of flags around outside their premises and all their issues are fixed, so that's good. If this series goes well it will apparently return next year when Theresa May is going to help Commonwealth countries fix their immigration policies. 

Anyway, for those who resisted the allure of watching Karren destroy the concept of satire, there was a game to watch. And what a game it wasn't, as Caley Graphics shows above.

Stoke arrived with their familiar brand of earthy physicality, elbows and constant fouling and allied that with the late season desperation of a team on Death Row. Moyes countered with his now standard 3-4-3 variant setup and has been slaughtered for such negativity despite the fact it looked pretty similar to the team that beat Southampton so easily.

One major difference between then and now was that Stoke actually brought a defence with them, but also our key players were a little off the boil. Marko Arnautovic huffed and puffed without ever quite hitting the heights of that day, while Edimilson Fernandes wandered around lost and bewildered by what was unfurling around him.

We therefore played nicely but without much urgency, and struggled to break the enormous line of Terracotta Soldiers that Paul Lambert deployed to keep us at bay. Such physicality needs to be played around, but we lacked the necessary invention or guile to do so, and even though Mark Noble probed and prodded intelligently from his deep lying position we were missing too much ahead of him. No Antonio or Lanzini to draw attention from him, and although we passed the ball well enough we couldn't really free a subdued Arthur Masuaku or the Ancient Mariner in our wide positions.

For all their time wasting - Ryan Shawcross apparently ties his boots with stinging nettles - and repetitive fouling that went ludicrously unpunished, Stoke were actually creating some reasonable half chances, and Mame Biram Diouf blazed over the best opportunity of the game in the second half. As it was, they eventually scrambled a lead when Joe Hart Joe Harted a shot from Shaqiri and Twitter personality Peter Crouch popped up with a tap in. I missed the Chelsea game and I'm now wondering if I'm going to go the whole season without seeing Joe Hart play well. He looked like a burst balloon, his confidence whistling out into the night sky.

At this point, Moyes did what he should have done far earlier and threw his reinforcements on. Lanzini arrived and then shortly after, so did Carroll, who was slung into the fray like a fireball catapulted into a medieval battle - with the knowledge that he might just destroy everything but what the fuck, we're losing anyway.

And so it was that just a few minutes later Aaron Cresswell swung over a hopeful cross and the pissed Geordie Wicker Man performed his yearly Chun Li Spinning Bird Kick and rescued us a point with a superb finish. On such nights, it sure is handy to have such a weapon on the bench and this was a near perfect deployment.

Shawcross tying up his shoelaces just out of shot

As it was we could have had a winner just moments later when Chicharito beat an abysmal Jack Butland dive from twenty yards but Carroll was penalised for handball, despite clearly being fouled by Shawcross at the time. In fairness to referee Michael Oliver, he's had a bit of a bad week with last minute penalties.

***

"And now the future's definition is so much higher than it was last year

It's like the images have all become real"

- Father John Misty, "Total Entertainment Forever"

One thought that seems to have been successfully inculcated into the collective groupthink of West Ham fans is that Moyes is somehow misusing Javier Hernandez. The Mexican is now a regular on the bench and was deployed to dramatic effect at Chelsea when his laser precision finish salvaged us an unlikely point.

But for all that, I see him as little more than a luxury that we can ill afford. As a central forward he offers nothing - no link up play, no mobility, no running the channels, no physical presence, nothing except a world class penalty box finishing ability. And that's the rub. How can a team as bad as us pass up any player with that level of skill?

Well, for an answer to that, one has to look at the games we've played where Hernandez was anonymous. Spurs away, Arsenal in the cup - we may as well have played with ten men. For all that it's easy to criticise Moyes and demand that he find a way of playing to suit Hernandez, I can't see what that actually would be. His time at Manchester United and Real Madrid was marked by those teams playing around him and dominating the opposition. The ball was frequently in that penalty area for him to latch on to, and tellingly, he was still a substitute for most of the time.

Fans need to let Hernandez go. A mid table team can't afford the extravagance of sinking £100,000 a week into a player who only plays fifteen minutes a game, and Hernandez shouldn't be doing much more than that. Tactically our best moments this season have come when Arnautovic has been deployed as a striker and freed up from doing any defensive work. Playing Hernandez pushes him deeper, and so too Antonio if he is fit, where their total lack of defensive effort is badly exposed.

This chain reaction through the team is what precipitated the move to three centre backs, as Moyes desperately sought ways to make us a bit more solid while still allowing him room to deploy his attacking players. This, in turn, pushed Zabaleta to a wing back role and badly exposed the fact that our central midfielders are way below average. An interesting thought experiment is to ask yourself which players from this squad you would keep if you were building a team from scratch.

I would take Ogbonna, Rice, Lanzini and Arnautovic. Cresswell and Masuaku are borderline, while Noble and Adrian would be valuable squad members. Beyond that I wouldn't be bothered about keeping any of them particularly and would be willing to load Joe Hart into a wheelbarrow and walk him back to Manchester. Clearly there are young players like Fernandes and Oxford who might mature into decent players in the future, and it's worth remembering that Ogbonna looked a busted flush at the start of the season so one has to ponder the effect of injuries on the likes of Obiang, but I can't see any other particular value in the squad.

Reid, Carroll and Antonio are too injury prone and the rest simply aren't up to it. Every time a West Ham fan demands a contract extension for James Collins a fairy is brutally butchered in the Welsh valleys. So stop it.

It's not much. Moyes has much work to do and not much time in which to do it. He might come to regret not having an experienced Director of Football to help him with a task of this size. If it's true that he has won that argument with the club, then he is taking a huge responsibility on to his shoulders. It might be worth remembering that not every win is a victory. 

West Ham 3 - 0 Southampton (And Other Ramblings)

"Twenty thousand roads I went down, down, down

And they all led me straight back home to you"

- Gram Parsons, "Return of the Grevious Angel"

It's been a while. 

Since we played. Since we played well. Since we won. Since it felt like it might be safe to look up. Since the most pertinent subject for one of these columns was the action on the pitch rather than off. And it's been nearly six years since we were able to cruise into the relative comfort of a three goal half time lead, having last done it against Fulham in 2012. But, you know, Fulham.

We are the Mark Hughes Appreciation Society

So what an afternoon this was. For all the gloom that hangs over this season like 1930's smog, it can't be denied that this was a beautiful blast of sunshine in the darkness. From the exhilarating start, through the gift of a two goal lead to that glorious third, this was an afternoon to savour. This was a day to make you remember why we do this. Why we throw down our money even when we expect nothing and of how sometimes football can take you and elevate your spirit. 

It is worth remembering that this game was supposed to take place at St Mary's. Our August fixture was switched in order to accommodate the reinstallation of that state of the art scaffolding that now adorns our rented home, and we duly crashed 3-2 on the South Coast to a last minute penalty, because West Ham. 

Who knows what might have happened had we been at home. Maybe we would have won and kickstarted our season and Slaven Bilic might still be here. Perhaps we'd still have been beaten and instead of having this fixture at home, been forced to go on the road in search of points. It matters not now, but to the extent that you think London Stadium fixtures are an advantage then it's worth noting that we are in that stage of the season where it's non negotiable that we start to get results. Losing here was unthinkable. 

And for David Moyes, now was the time to show that all that early praise was warranted. After all, plucky defeats at Manchester City are only useful if you then build upon that foundation. Initially he seemed able to do that, before running into typically West Hamian obstacles such as players having sellotape for hamstrings and selling your top scorer in the transfer window and replacing him with someone called Jordan. 

I didn't especially care that the players went to Miami for warm weather training or that they, gasp, went to the beach when they were there. In fact, I would much rather that the club did a few more things that fans didn't appreciate or understand so long as it was done in service of a wider, broader plan that was designed to take this club forward. Whether we are there yet or not, I don't know, but the opening seventeen minutes of this match were justification enough for the activities of the last fortnight. 

***

"I'm aware you're tired and lost"

- The War on Drugs, "Pain"

If you are facing a life or death struggle, it is generally considered helpful to face a suicidal opponent. Never was this better exemplified than the opening quarter of this match, when Southampton appeared to be wandering around in a cyanide fever dream, desperately trying to find new and exciting ways to gift us goals. 

L.O. Fucking. L

Saints began with all the urgency of a London Stadium ballboy, and never really improved from there. Mario Lemina started things off by getting dispossesed in our half and then chugging back as Cheikhou Kouyate stormed away down the unmanned right hand side. His cross picked out Joao Mario on the edge of the box, and the Portuguese made a difficult, thrilling finish look easy as he took two swift touches and rifled it past the flailing Alex McCarthy. 

This was a David Sullivan wet dream, as any risk of riot or protest was swept away with that goal. One could almost feel the confidence coursing through the stadium as both the home fans and team began to cotton on to the fact that Southampton were absolutely there for the taking. Marko Arnautovic should have made it two nil when Mark Noble slipped him through with a lovely reverse pass, only for the Austrian to skew wide when it really did seem impossible not to score. It proved immaterial as Mario shortly picked him out again with a tremendous cross, and after McCarthy saved his initial header brilliantly, the rebound fell straight to him to tap home and double the lead. Marko then looked up and gave Mark Hughes the crossed Hammers, which I thoroughly approved of as Mark Hughes is such a dickhead you can imagine that he said his wedding vows passive aggressively. 

Even with HammerKiller Charlie Austin up front, Southampton looked about as interested in attacking action as the referee in the Anthony Joshua fight, and with Declan Rice imperious, there seemed little serious threat of a comeback. That was all rendered moot with our third, right on the cusp of half time and a salutary lesson to all those who decided to risk trying to beat the fifteen minute half time toilet queues. 

Arthur Masuaku was freed on the left after some nice interplay between Kouyate and Cresswell. He carried it forward, but rather than take on Soares instead chose to whip a sumptuous crossfield swerving cross in behind the retreating defence, where Arnautovic met it with a glorious cushioned side foot finish. Had it been scored on another day, in another stadium, for another team, we would be hearing about this goal endlessly. Unfurling like an A3 masterpiece rolled out along a workbench, it was the most beautiful "fuck you" that a man could ever give to his former boss. I really don't understand why a club as progressive as Southampton have hired a manager as regressive as Hughes, but for one afternoon only, it made for a lovely picture show. 

I actually have quite a soft spot for Southampton in the post Nigel Adkins era, and have followed their progress closely after we were both promoted together in 2012. They appear well run, with savvy decision makers, a thriving academy and a clear plan for how to progress their club. In short, they are everything West Ham are not. But, for all that, they have declined as we have, and after this result must surely be fearful of the drop. 

In many ways, their situation is the example that should be held up for UEFA and the Premier League as an example of the damage they are doing to the game. Saints have produced Theo Walcott, Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, Gareth Bale, Adam Lallana, Callum Chambers, Luke Shaw and James Ward-Prowse. They have also introduced Victor Wanyama, Dejan Lovren, Virgil Van Dijk, Sadio Mane and Mauricio Pochettino to the English game. They also fleeced our idiot chairman of eight million quid for Jose Fonte, but ending up on the right side of a transfer deal with West Ham isn't much of a badge of honour these days.

That they have been cherry picked and deprived of those players by bigger, richer, UEFA funded teams such as Spurs and Liverpool is a grave cause for concern. Quite what has happened to all that money is probably another question, but the broader point is that cash isn't an issue to Champions League clubs because they are given revenue streams that the rest of us cannot access. 

But while all of that is reason to stand in sympathy with our South Coast brethren in the Brotherhood of Lower Half Teams Hoping to Make a Cup Final and Not Get Relegated, it didn't much matter here. Their team were awful. 

***

"Baby baby, sweet baby

You left me hurting' in a real cold way"

- Aretha Franklin, "Since You've Been Gone (Sweet Sweet Baby)"

Something was different today. For the first time in two months we were able to call upon Arthur Masuaku on the left, and his ability to retain possession while drawing men to him, was vital. While West Ham were superior to Southampton all over the pitch, that ability to carry the ball from deep positions is something we have been sorely lacking in these recent shellackings and was a key difference here. 

I'm not sure that the Caley Graphics xG map is all that useful today as it doesn't tell the tale that the visitors never actually had a shot in anger until after they went three down. In fact the second half of this game was really very Series Two of Heroes, whereby a very promising start just dissipated away completely. Of course, that matters rather less in Premier League matches than it does in network television shows, but I will say that watching Aaron Cresswell nearly volley home an outrageous Mario free kick was more entertaining than anything that Claire the cheerleader did second time around. 

With the visitors forced to commit men to wide areas to stop Masuaku advancing, that ensured the central midfield was a less congested place than usual, and the prime beneficiary was Joao Mario, who flitted around purposefully and ensured that we didn't miss Manuel Lanzini as much as we might. It is true that in heavier duty encounters he might not be a luxury that we can afford but it can't be ignored that his two early contributions were the reason we were two nil up so quickly. 

Just like West Ham, obviously

What was also noticeable in this game was that we looked rock solid defensively. Angelo Ogbonna is my Hammer of the Year so far, having been our best defender, scored a winner at Wembley against Spurs and never once elbowing anybody in the face and getting sent off in the first half of a game, and he was excellent here again. However, the key to our solidity was the teenager Rice, who came off two stellar performances for Ireland in midweek which, my cousins inform me, have already led to him being called Decenbauer in the Emerald Isle. 

What is so impressive about the youngster is that he seems to have such an innate understanding of his own game. His reading of play is outstanding and every time Saints looked like they might be inching into dangerous areas, he appeared to snuff out the danger. We have been dreadful at identifying good young defenders in recent years - primarily because we've only been trying to buy old ones - but perhaps the academy has finally solved a problem for us. The idea of giving James Collins a new contract when you have a talent like this to replace him is crazy. The Welshman has been a faithful servant but it is time to drag our defence out of the dial up era and into the digital age. There is, after all, nothing intrinsically wrong with having mobile players in your team. 

And perhaps the greatest reminder of that came when Edmilson Fernandes was introduced for the now seemingly permanently injured Michail Antonio after just nine minutes. Fernandes played in an old fashioned right half role and was, frankly, everywhere. I've never been completely on board with the idea that all of our problems would magically resolve themselves if everyone just ran about a bit more, but you couldn't deny the impact of a mobile pressing midfielder here. That ability to pressure Saints led to several turnovers, which led to all of our goals, and also led to Mark Hughes suddenly busying himself as Arnautovic was substituted. Schadenfreude really can be quite the laugh. 

Michail and the Hamstring Theory

As for Antonio, he got injured kicking the ball so I don't really know what to make of him anymore. Some say he overtrains, others that he doesn't train enough, but either way hamstring issues for a player of his explosive physicality are very bad news. If they can get a decent amount for him in the summer I would be inclined to take it. Let someone else do the job of patching him up and trying to find a position where his defensive frailties won't matter. On a day of almost unrestrained joy, watching him limp off in tears was a salutary reminder that injuries remain one of our biggest problems. After all, it takes a remarkable turn of events to have a three week break and get to the end of it with fewer fit players than you started with. 

***

"See if you can tick the man go downtown,

Where all you skins and mods you get together, make pretend it's 1969 forever"

- Babyshambles, "Delivery" 

I'm not going to talk much about off field issues this time around. 

Well maybe a little, but sometimes we all just need to take a break from such matters. Now and again it's alright to let one pass by outside the off stump without offering a shot. I could comment upon David Sullivan using the club to avoid tax, Karren Brady giving the most self immolating interview of her career, Sullivan sitting down with WHUISA and agreeing to consider a fan on the board or even the emergency SAB meeting which seemingly operated as a way for the Board to get Trevor Brooking to tell us all to stop whinging. 

But sometimes that stuff has to take a backseat. Occasionally one has to focus on the task at hand, and here today that was picking up a win against a fellow struggler. After all, I have vehemently argued against the notion that going down would in any way be a good thing for the club. Too many innocent people lose their jobs, too much good work is undone and the clock is reset too far. 

So I agree with those who say that the team must come first. 

But it should be noted that there is a lot of momentum to the fan movement just now. In the last three weeks I have been asked to comment on stories for The Independent, Bloomberg and Spiegel, written a piece for The Guardian, declined interviews with Talksport and ITV News, and had my articles quoted without permission in Metro, the Irish Independent and by the Press Association. I say none of that to try and suggest that I am some sort of pre-eminent commentator on West Ham - quite the opposite in fact. Each post on The H List is read by around 2,000 people, of whom about half are outside of the UK, a quarter are related to me and the rest are in prison and have restricted internet access. There is a further readership at KUMB.com and that is it. I highly doubt if this column is anywhere near the top ten most visited fan sites for West Ham supporters. 

But if a tiny blog like this can get some traction then this is a big story. We will probably never again have such a global platform upon which to float our views. There is little doubt that the protests at the Burnley game have stirred an interest far beyond the usual audience for such pieces, because there is a perfect confluence of public interest around the stadium, the highly visible public figures involved, a political slant, the inherent distrust that football fans have for football club owners and, of course, lots and lots of money. 

And so, for those who take the let's-just-survive-now-and-sort-it-out-in-the-summer line, it has to be acknowledged that this is manna from heaven for Sullivan and Gold. They want nothing more than to push all this down the road, and promise to get it fixed in the next transfer window. At this point, after years of saying that exact thing, it is basically their mantra. 

It puts us in an invidious position as fans. Protest and try to affect immediate and necessary change within our club, but with possible devastating side effects on the team. Somehow, there has even be a suggestion from Moyes that the Burnley protests would affect our ability to attract world class players in the summer, to which I say - well, what's been the excuse up until now then?

But let's forget that for now. Because on days like today one has to remember that we do support a football team, after all. I alternate taking my two oldest daughters to games, and for the eldest this was her first win at the London Stadium in two years of trying. And when Masuaku found Arnautovic floating on the back of an errant defender, and he cushioned home that magical third goal, it felt like the wait had been worth it. In that single moment, he demonstrated better than I ever could the glories  that might lie ahead if she was just prepared to persevere through rain and riot and repeated heartbreak. And walking home, through streets that had previously only ever offered up sad, contemplative reflection we were at last able to talk excitedly of goals and victories. We have won eight league games this season, and just six at home. Let's savour this one.