The Sound and The Fury

"What happened to ya?

We were one of a kind"

- Ian Brown, "What Happened to Ya? Pt 1"

This article started life as a match report of the game between West Ham and Crystal Palace. That was in January when life was simple and we were a top half team. Then circumstance took over and it has morphed somewhat. Of course, things were different back then. West Ham wasn't a racist club. People at the club seemed aware that we needed new players. Han Solo was Harrison Ford.

But so much has gone under the bridge that as I tried to write this piece I felt like a man using an umbrella to try and catch a fish; wholly unsuited to the task and unable to keep up. I've been abroad with no access to this account so I couldn't post up this piece, and yet with every passing hour it mattered less because the content was rendered obsolete by further developments. I honestly didn't think a club could dissemble this quickly without Mike Ashley being involved.

And now all we hear is sound, and every where we turn is fury. All of which leads inexorably to one simple question:

What has happened to my club?

What. Has. Happened. To. My. Club?

Perhaps it has always been this way. Maybe when other fans were telling us that we were their second team, they weren't simply saying it because of our helpful tendency to play nice football and at the same time roll over for them. I'm now wondering if that faint praise and those half smiles merely disguised a sense of being thankful that it wasn't them. Not for them the constant threat of humiliation and embarrassment. That was our sole preserve.

It is the lot of football club owners that fans will generally always hate them. Supporters place no limit on our ambition, and demand that owners follow our lead. But they are bound by such inanities as money and overdrafts and cashflows and rules and the realities of trying to keep such febrile businesses afloat. I don't doubt that running a football club properly is a job that demands high levels of skill and competence, perhaps outstripping a regular business because those enterprises do not come under such high levels of public scrutiny over every single decision they take.

Next Level

But is anyone still labouring under the misapprehension that West Ham is a well run football club? Surely even those who refuse to see anything wrong with our leadership so long as they make the crossed Hammers can't call me a Quisling for suggesting that they could be doing their basic tasks a little better than they currently are?

It is February and with the team bereft of fit players due to our annual injury crisis, the Board have allowed five players to leave the squad and brought just two in. They have made our squad smaller at a time when our Premier League place is not remotely secure and when our medical staff appears to be unable to stem the constant flow of injured players. And yet all of that garden variety incompetence doesn't even make the top three things they fucked up most on deadline day.

No, instead we have other crises to manage, namely the insinuation from our (newly minted) Head of Transfers, Tony Henry, that we no longer wished to purchase African players and then the revelation that Leicester will simply not do business with us due to some inane public comments from Karren Brady in her Sun column.

The beauty of this is that at the same time Henry was allegedly emailing out this "club policy" about African players to agents, the deal that was scuppered with Leicester was for the Algerian forward, Islam Slimani. We apparently can't even be racist properly.

And so it came to pass that West Ham fans must once again ponder why our club should always be so different. All fans love to feel they are hard done by, but telling people you support West Ham nowadays invokes an involuntary sense of sympathy from fellow supporters. They might not know the intimate details - the failure to qualify for the League Cup semi final because we forgot a player was cup tied, the requirement to pay Sheffield United £20m for the Tevez saga despite their being no legal grounds for it, the record signings who get injured on debut, the homesick player from Oxford, the preternatural gift for identifying soon to be bankrupt sponsors - but in a way, that doesn't matter. In the style of the Trump White House, it has ceased to be relevant what the drama is so long as there is some drama to distract fans.

We have been overwhelmed by a cavalcade of uselessness.

***

"We got to pump the stuff to make us tough,

From the heart"

- Public Enemy, "Fight the Power"

Before all of this happened we actually took a break from causing incredulity and played a game of football. That seems like a quaint nod to a bygone era now, like MTV playing a music clip or Government ministers being competent, and yet it does actually remain the primary activity of West Ham United. 

Crystal Palace were in town and they arrived with a fair wind behind them. Since Roy Hodgson took over, they have been surging, with their results finally catching up to the underlying analytics which have suggested all season that they were a good team underperforming. 

With the squad decimated, Moyes was forced to improvise and so we saw Pablo Zabaleta deployed into midfield and new signing Joao Mario given licence to roam widely in support of the lone striker, Chicharito, and both did all we could have asked of them. Historically the Mexican has been incapable of performing that role but here he battled and worked and generally did everything that he could to hold back the tide. Behind him Mark Noble and Cheikhou Kouyate stepped manfully into the breach and combined with Zabaleta to take the fight to the visitors, and if we were somewhat fortunate to be on level terms at half time, that engine room drove us forward to a surprisingly progressive second half display. 

Legend

I have latched on to Noble somewhat on recent weeks, as a kind of emotional life raft in the roiling sea of being a West Ham supporter. Because the owners are so rarely incapable of projecting a positive image of our club, we are forced to look elsewhere for things to be proud about and Noble couldn't be making me prouder right now. 

Forget the longevity and the fact he is a Hammers fan, because those things are nice but they aren't all that relevant. Instead focus on the way he cares. Focus on how he carries himself. Focus on how he represents our club on and off the pitch. As a footballer Noble is having his own resurgence as his experience and ever excellent technical ability allows him to continue controlling games from the middle of the park. But off the pitch he is also everything that this club is supposed to be. He is devoted to his community and an exemplar of how to treat others and give something back to the people who make up West Ham United, whether it's through his soccer schools or his housing project or just the simple ability to talk about football fans with a scintilla of empathy. 

At a moment when those who lead our club off the pitch routinely make me ashamed, Noble and his footballing brothers have found a way to restore my faith in the badge by what they do between the lines (you're probably correctly guessing here that this bit was written pre-Brighton). Here they were, battered and tired and with their numbers depleted by boardroom incompetence and yet they more than matched a tough opponent. It hasn't always been the case, but when you take a step back and view this match as dispassionately as possible, our players did us proud. 

Supporting Noble was Kouyate, who suffered a nasty head injury early on and returned as the second coming of Ian Bishop. He suddenly found a passing range, and began dominating the game in a way I haven't seen him do before. His astute pass found Chicharito just before half time, from which he and Mario fashioned a chance which was only interrupted by a James Tomkins foul. 

Penalty. Noble. You knew he wouldn't let us down. 

In the context of what was to later be revealed, it was stirring to see the return of Kouyate to his best form. We need his rangy athleticism and ability to, well, cause mayhem from central midfield in the absence of our more artisanal forwards. How ironic that our best ever African player should be so instrumental in leading the team to this crucial point. 

Mario looked lost to start but grew into a physical and frenetic game that saw possession routinely coughed up by both sides with startling frequency. The Portuguese conjured a lovely pass to free Chicharito for the penalty and generally looked the kind of quick witted, intelligent footballer who will link beautifully with Manuel Lanzini and Marko Arnautovic if they are ever all fit at the same time. I also enjoyed that his first touch involved him dribbling straight out of play while Moyes looked on, bemused. Levity amid the gloom. 

But the true calling card of Moyesian football seems to be the ability to construct a rock solid defence from the softest of materials. Here he was shorn of yet more bodies and he merely shrugged and rearranged the deckchairs to keep the Titanic afloat. So Aaron Cresswell went back out wide and reminded us all that he crosses with the consistency of a chicken on a High Street, and in came eighteen year old Declan Rice to the middle of the back three and nobody really batted an eyelid. Palace helped us out there somewhat, by channelling almost all their attacking play through the electric Wilfried Zaha. The Ivorian is one of those players who makes you inch forward involuntarily when he gets the ball, even as you're encouraging Sam Byram to kick him. And to be fair, Byram did, repeatedly. 

But generally we swarmed Zaha when he got the ball and on the one occasion that Palace didn't go through him, Andros Townsend surged to the byeline and crossed for Christian Benteke to head the opening goal. Had they done this a little more often we might have had a tougher evening, but as it was the visitors were indebted to Wayne Hennessey for a terrific save from a second half Chicharito header to keep things level. A point was, all things considered, a pretty fair result.

And then we went to Brighton, and I didn't see that game because I was overseas and sometimes you just have to be grateful that the Universe has been kind to you.  

***

"You thought I was cheap, you were the sale of the century, 

Creased ourselves up on the way down"

- Sleeper, "Sale of the Century"

And so as we all drifted away through the thin sheen of rain that covered the stadium like mist, the talk turned to the transfer deadline. They've got to do something, we thought. Kudos to Moyes and the boys for that performance, we all thought, but now they need help. 

Of course, I should say that such thoughts go against the grain for me. I don't like David Sullivan buying anyone because he doesn't understand football, but I particularly don't like him buying anybody in January because he doesn't seem to understand footballing economics either. So, after a history that includes Mido, Benni McCarthy, Robert Snodgrass and Nene, and public commentary from both Sullivan and Brady that they considered these transfers as failures, it felt natural that we should want the club to sit this window out. After all, they couldn't make any stupid decisions if they didn't make any decisions. 

But the other hallmark of the club in recent years has been the chronic failure to keep our playing staff fit. Whatever the club is doing in this regard is not working and it tends to have an overwhelmingly negative impact on the handwritten scrawl on the back of a lottery ticket that our owners laughably call our business plan. 

Not only do we drop points due to the weakened sides we constantly have to field, but it has caused the Board to act rashly in trying to plug the gaps. Hence they spent £10m of this summer's budget on Snodgrass when they really only needed him for a few games to cover a player shortage last January, and now they can't even recall him from Aston Villa to do the same this year. 

A poor signing, treated poorly

But what was different last year was the context of our league position and the fact that we were just about to emerge from our injury crisis. We enjoyed a brief revival to lift us up the table and by the time that Fonte and Snodgrass arrived it was already pretty evident that we were not going to be relegated. Thank God for Sunderland. 

But this year is different, with a whole glut of similar teams all scrabbling around for the same few points, and our playing resources likely to be paper thin for a while yet. As it happens, I think Moyes gives us an advantage over those other teams, but our injuries have reduced his options to the point that we couldn't name a full substitutes bench at Huddersfield. This was not a window in which to suddenly decide to keep our powder dry, and such inertia could prove fatal. Sullivan has taken a huge risk. 

And so it was that we came limping into the deadline having failed to do anything beyond add Joao Mario on a loan and Jordan Hugill from Preston North End. I have no issue with the purchase of Hugill, particularly as he has come from Preston and will have been properly scouted by Moyes and Alan Irvine as a result. In a time when English clubs are awash with money, and previously unheralded overseas leagues are churning out good players at higher rates than ever, it is entirely possible that divisions like the Championship and the Scottish Premier League are once again the best place to get value for money. And lest we forget, Cresswell, Michail Antonio and Dele Alli all came from somewhere.

Hugill is perhaps a little older than we might like, at twenty five, but he should know his own game and has already demonstrated a considerable amount of fortitude in rising from the Glen Hoddle Academy to the Premier League. In a team with our problems, I see no issue with adding a player prepared to run himself into the ground, and if he fails, then he is young enough to be resold in a year or two for some sort of return. He is, in that sense, the very antithesis of Benni McCarthy.

Tattoo sleeve, beaming smile. You'll do, son, welcome aboard

The problem with the signing is not with the player but the context. With Diafra Sakho finally gone, and scoring against PSG immediately, we were already light up front. Thus the sale of Andre Ayew for £18m was baffling on a number of levels. 

Ayew is, by my estimation, the only footballer under thirty whose value has dropped in the last two years. At a time when Moussa Sissoko costs £30m and £20m is an opening offer for pretty much every Premier League player, we are once more selling our players into a totally different market then we buy from. This is the problem when we feel the need to offer such astronomical wages to attract players to West Ham in the first place. While the owners might think that having the thirteenth largest wage bill in Europe is a sign of ambition, most others see it as a sign of chronic inefficiency and it makes players very hard to shift without reducing their transfer fees drastically. We have fallen into the age old trap of paying players for what they have done elsewhere rather than what they will do for us. Say what you will about Hugill, he will earn his money through his performances in claret and blue. Ask yourself if that could really be said about Joe Hart. 

So off went Ayew, Sakho, and Toni Martinez and if anything happens to Chicharito on Saturday then we go to Liverpool with our line being led by Preston's striker. It's a curious time to be alive, no?

***

"How could it ever come to pass? She'll be the first, she'll be the last

To describe the way I feel"

- The Stone Roses, "She Bangs The Drums"

All of which is skirting around the main issue, which can be simply laid out in the question I asked above, namely "What the hell is happening to my club?"

Rumours have swirled around for days now about why we are losing players when we need to add them and why we would be apparently offering ludicrously low amounts to try and pry players away. Those rumours range from the owners asset stripping in preparation for a sale to both HMRC and criminal investigations into our transfers, via a massive cashflow issue to straight up incompetence - the latter still being my best guess. 

I understand that transfers are complex and hard to get done, but so are brain surgeries and you don't get to have a go at them because you bought a private hospital. Fans are furious, and while that might not always have a basis in rational thought, I happen to agree that if nothing else, we deserve better than we are currently getting. We shouldn't kid ourselves that our reputation was glittering when they took over, but we were promised that with Karren Brady and her ultra professional stewardship we could look forward to a rehabilitation of our public image. 

Instead, they have stumbled from crisis to crisis, stopped off to get into a slanging match with Sporting Lisbon, fallen out with their own players, while slating some we haven't even bought and topped all that by alienating the entire taxpaying population of the country. It might wind us all up, but Jack Sullivan's Twitter account is pretty small beer. 

Goodbye

On March 10th the Real West Ham Fans Group are planning to march on the Club, and while I don't really agree with the action I understand it wholly. The burning sense of frustration that is searing through the West Ham support has been grossly underestimated by those in the boardroom. "Wait until the next transfer window" might suffice for the apparently tepid self examinations that pass for Board meetings but that is no comfort to fans driving back from Wigan into a howling gale and wondering why they just surrendered their Saturday for a club that can't help but give off the signal that it despises them.

And now.

Now somehow we have plumbed new depths. Tony Henry's comments made his position untenable. He may have been stitched up by the Mail, the last bastion of anti-racism, but his apparent confusion about why his comments were a problem didn't show that he wasn't being racist, but instead showed that he didn't understand how he was being racist. That's not the same thing. Our club, the first English top flight team to have three black players, does not need such people in it's employ. 

And what it all highlights is the total shambles that is our corporate governance. Henry doesn't want African players but we still try and loan Slimani on deadline day. He doesn't think Russian players settle very well in England and still we try to get Fyodor Smolov until the player calls it off because he thinks his club are being lowballed. 

Best of all is Henry's concern about how well Italian players adapt when our player of the season so far is literally an Italian of African descent. When Cheikhou Kouyate posts an Instagram picture with the caption "African and Proud" then the club must surely understand that this is beyond their agency to stage manage. You don't get to tell people how they feel. Henry is gone, but significant questions remain. 

Ade Coker and Clyde Best (and Clive Charles). Heroes - let's learn our own history

And as an aside, perhaps if the club properly celebrated men like Clyde Best, Ade Coker and Clive Charles a little more obviously, instead of constantly regaling us with tales of a team who finished third, then their employees and fans might be a little more attuned to the relevance of racism in our history. And yes, I realise being black is not the same as being African, but I think we're in the same territory here.

Overriding all of that is the concern about who else knew about Henry's "policy" and why he was talking to the press without apparent supervision. As the lads at Hammers Chat pointed out, Sullivan has been keen to play up links to Henry in the past:

That's vague enough to allow Sullivan to say he was unaware, but if he was then it really doesn't reflect well on a structure that can allow such activity from a senior employee to go unnoticed. This, of course, is the problem with an owner who only wants association with successful transfers. There is a huge hole where a proper, functioning Sporting Director or Director of Football would sit. And you all know where I'm going with that. 

As for Karren Brady and her inane column in The Sun, I remain confused as to why this is even a thing. Sullivan's assertion that he would have to pay her more if he didn't let her go off and write for Murdoch, shill for Alan Sugar, help out Philip Green and sit in the House of Lord's doesn't really hold up to scrutiny when she's getting £900,000 a year from us. 

Either way, our Karren sure can pick her business associates. 

I wonder what Brady's own position would be if a West Ham employee cost the club a transfer due to an artless thought posted online or in a newspaper. I suspect they'd be gone before they could yell "what about slapping women?" through the window. 

I've defended Brady many times because I think she is criticised primarily by a lot of West Ham because she is a woman, and for no other reason. In this case, she cannot be defended. Her desire for fame seems to outstrip her desire to do a good job for us. That's a problem. 

Which brings us back to that march by the Real West Ham Fans group. As I mentioned, I don't particularly agree with this initial course of action, because it feels like dropping a nuclear bomb as your opening gambit, but that's up to them. I also can't help but concede that they are probably right to think this is the best way to motivate change. But it's a specific problem for the board now. They are toxic and their constant failures are magnified by the media storm they insist on creating around the club. The problem when you're so desperate for attention is that you don't get to duck out when that attention is negative. Where we once went for the Cearns Family and Terry Brown, now it is the current owners, and once that particular rock starts rolling it will be nearly impossible to stop. 

I don't want to reach the position where the owners and their families are being abused at games, but it's also possible to see why fans don't feel they have any choice but forceful protest. All of the purported fan engagement ideas of the last few months have led nowhere meaningful. The club is still run disastrously, and we are regressing at an alarming rate. A change has to come. It has to.

I would call once again for the owners to step back and disappear from the spotlight. Hire a Director of Football and give that person carte blanche to modernise the Club. Send the Sullivan boys to German clubs where they can learn their trade at the cutting edge, and not by serving coffee in our club cafe, if it truly is the intention that they are going to one day run this club.

Have Karren Brady reduce her extra curricular efforts and focus her energies on West Ham as a community enterprise. Let's see her turn those formidable talents that we hear so much about and see so little of, to endeavours that matter to fans - Isla's Fight would be an easy cause to pick up and gain ground with fans, so too the long term funding for the Supporters Club, or engaging with WHUISA on all sorts of fan matters. She might argue that she does that already and I might argue that I wouldn't know because I only ever hear about her doing things that are nothing to do with my club.

And that, after all, is what this is all about. This club will endure because it always has, but I find it hard to grasp how badly our owners are currently letting us down. When a player can walk over to the travelling support after a defeat at a promoted club and ask where the money has gone, you know things are bad. The manager deserves scrutiny too, of course, especially as we seem incapable of defending against weaker sides, but the backdrop to all of this seems to be a boardroom culture of incompetence that is suffocating all else inside the club.

So, back to my question, because we are running out of time to get a satisfactory answer. 

What is happening to my club?

Crystal Palace 2 - 2 West Ham (And Other Ramblings)

"Now I've swung back down again, it's worse than it was before

If I hadn't seen such riches, I could live with being poor"

- James, "Sit Down"

So in a week where we learned exactly how long it takes to rig a league cup quarter final draw (it's two hours) we learned how long we are allowed to be happy. It's two days. Two bloody days of savouring that win at Wembley and then we're back on the rollercoaster once again. Even Pontius Pilate got three days of thinking he'd sorted out his Jesus problem before reality started to bite.

The worst thing is that viewed in isolation, it isn't that terrible or surprising that we can't beat the bottom team in the league. Over the last two years we were the only team around who struggled to beat Sunderland and if it wasn't for nine dropped points against relegated teams, we would have finished level on points with runners up Arsenal in 2015/16.

If, if, if - the clarion call of the desperate and the dreamers, but still. Shit.

This. The whole article basically boils down to this.

One thing that did hit me as I watched this game, is how difficult it really is to get a handle on West Ham. We so rarely play in the same formation, or with the same tactical approach or even with the same level of efficiency, that opinion tends to swing wildly from game to game. And so far, every game has come with a caveat: injuries, sendings off, the desperate need to just get a win so we just take what points we can get and then worry about the performance later. 

Someone - and I apologise to whomever it was because I can't remember who posted it and can't find it again now - appeared in my Twitter feed after this game making the point that we haven't played well yet this season. My immediate thought was that this was ludicrously harsh, but if you take that to mean a complete ninety minute performance then that's probably true. Even the Miracle of Wembley required a disaster in the first half, in order for the whole thing to be miraculous.

So I thought I'd list out our league performances so far and see if it's really true that each game has had a sizeable caveat attached to it, and whether any of them can really be said to be good, front to back, 90 minute displays:

Opposition	Result	Caveat
Man Utd	0-4	They'll beat everyone, loads of injuries
Southampton	2-3	Ten men, played well second half, ref
Newcastle	0-3	Loads of injuries, everything will be better at home
Huddersfield	2-0	All that matters is the result, it's hard at home
West Brom	0-0	Nobody plays well against West Brom
Spurs	2-3	Good start, we played Andy Carroll
Swansea	1-0	All that matters is the result
Burnley	1-1	Ten men, did you see that one move in the 2nd half?
Brighton	0-3	Erm, we didn't play Andy Carroll
Palace	2-2	Our players have no brains. None of them.

OK, so my immediate thought is that the Burnley game was probably our best performance of the season and it involved seventy minutes with ten men, an assist from our goalkeeper and featured another late equaliser. Overall I think we played well, but draws against Burnley do not contented supporters make, especially when they get followed up with 3-0 defeats at home to Brighton. 

Our two victories were both fairly dire, albeit we were the better team on both occasion. We're just so inconsistent from game to game, from half to half and even from one passage of play to another, that any kind of objective assessment feels impossible. But what fans really want is a complete display from start to finish, with all areas of the team functioning and a resounding victory, because that allows us to stop thinking of sustained competence as being a hypothetical concept. 

***

Take this game for instance. How can you moan about a team being two nil up at half time, with two superbly engineered and wonderfully taken goals? Well, I suppose the reality is that at the interval everything did seem to going swimmingly, even if we did have to rely upon an absolutely amazing double save from Joe Hart to keep us in front at 1-0. So what though, that's what he's there for, after all. 

But then the came the worst second half defensive performance since John Parker left Ford's Theatre, Washington DC, 1865 during the intermission of "Our American Cousin" to go and have a drink at a saloon next door. While he was getting smashed, John Wilkes Booth assassinated Abraham Lincoln and Parker struggled to get much more work in the bodyguard field, although he did later turn out a couple of times at right back for West Ham. 

That's it Michail, into the corner 

At one point in the first half of this game I was beginning to wonder if it was possible to write an article about a match where nothing happened. Even Sartre would have found this all a bit challenging to describe, as two very poor teams engaged in a battle to see who could do least with most. 

And then the game sprang into life. Wilfried Zaha broke into the box and went down in a tangle with Jose Fonte. I thought it looked a bit innocuous, but would have probably wanted it given at the other end. As it was, Bobby Madley waved it away and we then swept upfield with a glorious move that culminated in Chicharito slotting home his fourth of the season. The goal was fairly reminiscent of Lanzini's winner in the corresponding fixture last year, as Cresswell served it up on a plate and the Mexican cleverly flicked it in with the outside of his boot. 

Prominent in the build up to that goal was Andre Ayew, playing just off the striker and getting on the ball very nicely, and he was at it again a few minutes later. This time he latched on to a loose ball courtesy of some good pressing by Fernandes, and drove forward, turned Scott Dann so many times he could have opened a bottle of Merlot with him, and then smashed it in to the top corner from outside the box. He probably should have slipped in Fernandes outside him, but when you're having the kind of week he is, you can't blame him for taking it on. 

As it is, all West Ham players should probably be shooting from everywhere at Selhurst Park as we only ever seem to score screamers against them. 

So a two nil lead at half time seemed fairly sustainable against a team who had scored twice all season, but as this shot map from Caley Graphics shows, you can make an argument that we were fortunate to get anything at all such was the dominance of the home team. But football games aren't played on spreadsheets and when you get to the 97th minute of a game with the lead then you expect to leave with three points. This one was a gut wrencher. 

***

When whoever it is that assembles the playing staff at West Ham decided to put together the oldest, slowest backline in the league I'm fairly sure that they weren't envisioning games like today. We are now ten games into the season and have the third worst goal difference in the league, Zabaleta has been booked five times, we have been beaten 3-0 by two promoted teams and have conceded four penalties. 

Today it was Angelo Ogbonna who decided to forget everything he had learned playing for Juventus and Italy, and brainlessly nudged over Andros Townsend right at the start of the second half. It was soft as ice cream in a sauna and wouldn't have been a penalty in 1985, but as far as arguments go that's not actually a very good one. The penalty went in and suddenly we lost any momentum rolling over from Spurs and instead found ourselves penned back as the home team bombed forward. 

Moments after that goal, Yohan Cabaye hit the post and we were wobbling mightily. It was good timing then, for Joe Hart to start illustrating quite why we'd gone out and paid so much money to get him when Adrian is a perfectly capable Premier League keeper. Wave after wave of home attacks were repelled with a combination of last ditch blocks and brilliant Hart saves. 

Among a number of fine stops, he kept out a Cabaye free kick that looked destined for the top corner and somehow tipped a James Tomkins header on to the bar. In truth, much of the Palace threat came from set pieces as they looked for all the world like West Ham 2014/15 under Sam Allardyce, featuring long deep crosses to Tomkins that were then kept alive in the box for onrushing attackers.  It took a decent amount of World War One style Tommies in the trenches defending to keep them out, which was fitting as we were wearing our new third kit which is apparently a homage to our first ever strip in 1900. 

Joe Hart, ladies and gentleman

So Hart probably deserved better than to be beaten by Zaha's 97th minute equaliser, but in reality we couldn't complain. Had we not wasted so much time throughout the second half we wouldn't have been on the pitch to have given up the goal. As it was, Lanzini and Antonio took a free kick in the 87th minute and decided to keep it in the corner. This was particularly ironic as Palace would score their second a whole ten minutes later, but perhaps more crucially still - neither one of them took it in the fucking corner. 

***

Ah yes, taking the ball into the corner to protect a one goal lead. It's boring and negative when it's done against you, and the height of professional game management when your team does it. And now this morning, Antonio has been roundly criticised for failing to do exactly that in the minute before the goal. 

The problem I have with this is that had Antonio ignored the three on one situation in the Palace box, where Ayew, Lanzini and Chicharito were waiting for any kind of decent cross, and gone over to the corner flag it's still possible that the same thing could have happened. He could still easily have lost the ball, and Palace could have broken away and scored and everybody would have lost their shit that he was being so negative and spurned a gold plated opportunity to seal the win.

Therefore, my issue with Antonio doing what he did isn't that he did it, but more that he did it so badly. The worst part of it all is that any half decent ball would surely have resulted in a goal, which is of course the absolute best way to kill off a game. As it was, Dann chested the laziest pass of all time back to Speroni, and Palace worked it out to Zaha who did a bizarre loop with the ball before driving the winner through a crowd of legs and thousands of West Ham fans muttered "Of course he fucking did" to whomever they were with at the time, before crying like we were watching a walrus trying to find a bit of ice left at the North Pole to park her kid on.

That said, we had so many opportunities to launch late breakaway counters and we seemed clueless as to how to do it. I haven't seen a group of people so unsure of how to attack since the villagers in The Magnificent Seven. 

As such, I have no issue with Antonio doing what he did - he should have just done it better. And maybe the players in the box could have actually chased back, but then I guess when we all moan that the team doesn't look remotely fit enough, we can't really complain when they can't physically match other teams in the late stages of games.

And so the rollercoaster surges on. 

***

What is interesting after games like this is how we all fall very easily into the trap of telling each other how obvious and predictable it was that this would happen. Truthfully that's not really very fair as we are no worse than any other team when it comes to defending two goal leads. However, as a club we are pretty bad for letting in late goals, and we also have exceptional timing, meaning that we would of course throw away a two goal lead just two days after skewering Spurs in the same way. It's more West Ham than Bubbles, Bobby Moore and getting drawn away in the cups to Big Clubs (™). 

Under Bilic our record in this situation is actually pretty good:

2-0 Up			2-0 Down
W	L	D	W	L	D
11	1	1	1	21	3

So, with a two nil lead this is only the second time that we've failed to win under Bilic. The other was when we were ahead against Watford at the London Stadium and then Troy Deeney got upset about rabonas and everybody forgot how to defend and instead just rode around on unicycles squirting water in each others faces.

It would perhaps be better if you tried to ignore how often we have gone 2-0 down under Bilic unless you want to completely lose your mind.

***

And what of Bilic? What does this game tell us about him? We routinely lead the league in defensive errors that lead to goals and that shows no sign of abating. You can argue that he isn't responsible for experienced defenders giving away needless penalties or you can say that when people keep continually making mistakes in his teams that perhaps the structure in which they are playing isn't conducive to error free football.

As it is, we don't really know anything today that we didn't already know yesterday. He still seems cursed with bad luck, he still can't organise a defence, and juggling all his attacking options around seems to befuddle him. Here he pushed Kouyate back into a trio of centre backs and he did pretty well, perhaps unsurprisingly given that the 3-4-3 came back into fashion when Barcelona started dropping their central midfielders between their centre backs and sending their full backs off like auxiliary wingers. The problem is that without him in midfield we lacked the ability to carry the ball or break up play, and even Manuel Lanzini looked peripheral as we struggled to get him in possession.

We also scored with our only two shots on target which either shows a pleasing level of efficiency or a desperate lack of creativity, depending on your world view. While all of that was happening Obiang, Antonio, Carroll and Arnautovic were on the bench and you couldn't help but return to that question one more time - what the hell were we trying to achieve with our summer transfer activity?

So Bilic will wander onwards, because when he was given two games to save his job it didn't make any particular sense, but once you say that then you probably can't fire him after a win and a draw even when the circumstances of those results were so crazy.

It will surprise none of you to know that I don't think a great deal of our Board and their management structure, but I have some sympathy over this decision. How can you assess this? It's impossible to sift through all the madness of those two matches and draw anything concrete from it. And realistically, this constantly undulating graph of our performance that reflects a Himalayan skyline is probably reflective of where we are as a club. Everything is chaotic, there's loads of wild stuff happening behind the scenes and in the end that was always going to bleed out on to the pitch.

Changing the manager might help, purely because they might be able to organise our defence to at least recognise each other occasionally, but I don't think it would make too much difference. This is the problem when you choose not to back a manager by giving him a new contract, but also choose not to fire him. So Bilic exists in this strange footballing purgatory because we all accept that you can't get anyone better in November, especially when you're down with the dead men, but we all know he won't be staying beyond July. In some respects it's probably a testimony to his man management skills that the players pay any attention to him at all given the circumstances, but even though that may be true, I really do wish he'd sort out our back four.

So on we roll, back on the rollercoaster.

***

In a week where the growth of English youth football is on everyone's mind, it's worth noting that England have won both the u17 and u20 World Cups without any West Ham players. This has been a common theme this summer, as most of the best kids seem to come from the same academies - Manchester City, Chelsea and Arsenal are prominent - and it does lead me to wonder quite what is happening with our scouting.

It's not to say we don't have kids at these tournaments as Dan Kemp and Nathan Trott were squad players at their respective Toulon and European Finals, while Domingos Quina also represented Portugal in the latter. But what is striking is how so many of the kids that represent England at these tournaments come from London and how we really seem to be struggling to identify and attract those kids.

Quina was picked up from Chelsea and the likes of Toni Martinez and Martin Samuelson were also transferred for decent sums. Not that this isn't a reasonable way to acquire players but what I'm referring to is the older method of picking up a boy at the age of 9 or 10 and bringing him through your system, moulded as the kind of player you want. We've been struggling with this for a while, and maybe Declan Rice and Reece Oxford will prove us wrong but it's starting to concern me that London kids might now be presented with three other better options for their footballing development at Chelsea, Spurs and Arsenal.

A friend of mine took his very talented nine year old to West Ham recently at the club's request, and when they arrived he was bunched in with a huge number of other children and nobody took any notice of them. His main observation after watching his son learn precisely nothing in an hours worth of coaching, was that "they fail primarily as human beings".

One persons experience isn't indicative of anything, but at some point we may want to ask why our youth policy isn't delivering players in the same way as other teams. Declan Rice might very well be one such player but our London rivals are currently producing Premier Leaguers at a rate of far higher than once every five years, as we tend to do.

I don't know enough to comment fully on this, but I highlight it just to make the point. More help from the Academy is needed. 

West Ham 3 - 0 Crystal Palace (And Other Ramblings)

1. Time For Heroes

Prior to this game, if someone had asked me to describe the atmosphere at the London Stadium this season, I would have said it was as though a great blanket of negativity had gradually, slowly enveloped the ground over a period of months.

Going to games has been difficult with the transport not up to scratch, the stewarding largely a nightmare, dealing with the ticket office a brief venture in haphazard psychosis and the games themselves being largely dismal affairs played out on a pitch that is miles away from most fans.

And as time has passed, it has gradually dawned on us, that blanket has slowly settled on our heads, that none of that is going to change.

We're always going to have to queue for the trains for ages, we're never going to be able to generate that same Upton Park roar, and as much as we might will it to happen, that pitch isn't getting any closer. This is it.

And amidst that backdrop there has been so much else to be negative about. The transfer disasters, the insipid football, the Board generally dismaying fans with an alacrity that Martin Cearns could only dream of, and now Dimitri Payet turning his back on us.

He didn't even get injured

I hope you don't judge me too harshly then, when I tell you that I skipped this game. I just couldn't take it. I've read this book before folks and I knew how it ended. Big Sam in town, Allardycing us to death in a lousy 2-0 defeat while Palace fans sang Payet songs into the cold January evening.

For 70 minutes I felt pretty justified in my decision, as the game was a stifling mess, bereft of the sort of touches that He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named would usually bring to the stage.

But football is a wonderful, unpredictable, changeable mistress and she was no different here. Mark Noble was recalled for this game, as a kind of Cockney counterpoint to Payet and he released Michail Antonio into Payet's now vacated inside left channel. Wayne Hennessey was so distressed by this that he came charging off his line with the kind of speed you only usually see from Payet when he spies his wife is flicking through his phone, and with that rush of blood came the opening we craved. Antonio skipped past the crazy fucker and crossed to a possibly offside Sofiane Feghouli, who clearly can't be trusted with anything further out than two yards, and we were in.

The drama is draining and the negativity a constant weight on all our shoulders, but nothing beats a goal. The release was palpable from 10 miles away.

Forget the circus - a weight had been lifted.

2. The Good Old Days

Being one nil up against Sam Allardyce teams is a nice place to be. For 70 minutes his tactics worked superbly as his 5 man midfield forced us into long periods of nothingness, and everything seemed set for the inevitable late Palace winner.

But once behind, Allardyce teams look lost. Told to sit in and frustrate the opposition, it is hard for them to expand on that and throw off those shackles in pursuit of a goal. He's only had Palace for four games and it shows, as they pushed forward and we picked them off with pleasing ease. For a brief moment it was easy to forget about Payet and Zaza and the fact we have no right back, and instead imagine that it was 2015-2016 all over again. Crowd noise, an atmosphere, a genuine striker and West Ham counterattacking like Napoleon at Austerlitz.

If the Feghouli goal was a slight loosening of the pressure valve, then Andy Carroll's goal smashed it open and nailed it to the sky. Noble, Lanzini and Antonio combined once more down the Payet channel, but the latter's cross looked largely optimistic.

Not so said our pissed Geordie octopus, who backed away and fashioned a frankly incredible bicycle kick that was fit to grace any game of football. The ball flew into the roof of the Palace net with the velocity and accuracy of a Patriot missile, and six months of frustration was vented into the skies above East London. Sam Allardyce would later describe this with his customary good grace as a "goal we gifted to them". Hokey dokey Sam, have another pint of wine.

I'm gutted I missed it. Even on a shaky looking stream the place looked to be rocking, and everything I've read since only confirms it.

Good. We deserve it. In a season of unremitting gloom this was as welcome as seeing Diego Costa fall out with Antonio Conte after two days of hearing about Payet from lifelong Chelsea fans, who think football was invented in 2003 and that Mickey Hazard is something to do with Rohypnol.

3. The Man Who Would Be King

Perhaps the biggest beneficiary of Payet's Paul Ince homage has been Manuel Lanzini, who has suddenly become a playmaker destined to benefit from the opportunity to play without Payet. This is a bit barmy, as at least one benefit of a player like Payet is that he draws defenders to him and leaves space for players to Lanzini to exploit.

The Argentine's best performance in a West Ham shirt came at Chelsea last year when his ability to break from midfield was crucial, and should have seen us win comfortably. However, that day he had Kouyate all over the place alongside him, and Payet and Cresswell destroying Chelsea down the left.

This season he has been in and out of the side, with injuries and form being a problem, as well as trying to find a place to fit him into a misfiring midfield. His best turns have been playing deeper, alongside Obiang and using his dribbling to carry us forward. In other words, the glowing accolades suddenly bestowed upon him haven't exactly matched the reality of the matches.

"Hold me. I'm knackered"

Here he was given licence to roam, with Payet absent and Noble and Obiang behind him to provide ballast, and he was outstanding. His quickness of foot is wonderful, and when the time came to do something, anything, in the final third it mostly fell to him to do it.

His goal was a thing of simple, devastating beauty. The corpse of Loic Remy was raised from the dead by Allardyce for this game, and in the space of a few seconds he lost the ball in our box, and between Reid and Antonio, suddenly Lanzini was breaking free. He carried it to the edge of the box before dinking it over Hennessey - who by this stage had had quite enough of this shit - with impish brilliance. It was a perfect goal to seal a game and the perfect fuck you to Payet, Marseille, agents, Chelsea and all the other evils of the world.

After his 80 yard sprint he then carried on and jumped into the crowd to celebrate, meaning that the overall distance run on the goal was something like two miles.

I can see why fans want to latch on to Lanzini as the perfect replacement for Voldemort, but I'd urge some caution. He seems to function best when paired with others - previously Payet, and here Feghouli - and we'll need to put some equivalent talent around him to get the best out of him. I'm sure that sounds familiar, but I can't figure out why.

4. Don't Look Back Into The Sun

The off the field battle was almost as interesting here as the stuff on the pitch. Bilic has actually beaten Allardyce in both their meetings, and here he did well to adjust on the fly to the Palace tactics.

The first half was largely tedious, with a half chance for Carroll and a golden opportunity for James Tomkins that he Feghoulied wide from about 8 inches.

At half time Bilic introduced a lesser spotted right back and suddenly off we went. Michail Antonio, who had a temperature of 101 on Friday and was rewarded for his determination to play by being stuck out at wing back again, was released to play alongside Carroll and suddenly we were in business. Sam Byram might not be the answer at right back, but he's a better answer than any of other options, and the simple presence of an outlet ball was disproportionately pleasing after a season of watching a succession of square pegs jamming up that particular hole.

The truth is that if we played this game again tomorrow we might just as easily lose. I don't think we were noticeably that much better than Palace but we took our chances, and our manager showed an ability to get his team to play in more than one fashion. You might also reasonably argue that those two fashions were "bad" and "good" but that in itself might sum up the Bilic/Allardyce comparison perfectly.

Palace played okay but never looked like they could transcend that. We were crap and good in the same game. That wild fluctuation seems to be a Bilic trademark as opposed to the steadiness (or tedium, depending on your viewpoint) of Allardyce.

This is really how I view these two. Allardyce can get a team into a certain range in the league and probably not much higher unless he has a lot of time or money. Bilic seems capable of getting higher, but also carries the risk of finishing up lower too, as we are seeing this season.

In the long term it doesn't matter much as Allardyce doesn't manage us anymore, but it felt like an interesting counterpoint, and Bilic deserves credit for the way he changed things up and altered the seemingly inevitable flow of the game.

5. Heart Of The Matter

Mark Noble had an interesting day. He is a lightning rod for those who would affect wild and sweeping changes on the team, with most seeming to think that his lack of pace is career limiting, but on days like these his qualities are evident.

Just got a text in from Vernon Kay, lads

I'm not sure he should be playing ahead of the Kouyate-Obiang-Lanzini axis, but here he did what he does very well. He tackled, worked hard, chivvied and played one or two sublime passes to create the first half chance for Carroll and the through ball that released Antonio for the opener.

His pace is waning, and at this point he has all the speed of Jeremy Hunt answering his phone on a Sunday, but he still has plenty to offer the side. The willingness to get on the ball and make passes, and take responsibility in a struggling side is a significant plus. It strikes me that in a team so low on confidence that it is odd to criticise a player who is willing to do that with regularity. Noble never hides and on days like Saturday that is important, when it feels like an opening will never come, and the tension is palpable.

His role might need to change over the next couple of seasons, but in this week of all weeks it's hard to dispute that the man is committed to the cause.

Also, anyone prepared to lift up a ball boy by the bib deserves some patience.

Nobes 😂 pic.twitter.com/axaxNBl95y

— West Ham News (@WHUFC_News) January 16, 2017

6. What A Waster

Goodbye then Simone Zaza. We hardly knew ye, except for the fact that you once took a penalty for Italy whilst riding a unicycle, and you have tattooed knees. The issue of Zaza is curious as it seems to be simultaneously the fault of David Sullivan that he failed, due to the ludicrous pressure of being asked to prove himself in 14 games, whilst the chairman also gets credit for not wasting £20m on a player who couldn't find the net with shoal of fish.

In retrospect, the whole Zaza saga reflects poorly on the Club. We signed him late in the summer when it became clear that our ploy of telling everyone that "we've got a load of money and baby we intend to spend it" somehow didn't end up with us being offered top players at knockdown bargain prices.

Thus Zaza arrived, and I have no idea if he was ever a real target, but he played because everyone else was already injured. It was September after all.

I really have no idea how he was ever supposed to fit into our system. He never showed the mobility to play as a lone striker and his link up work was decidedly patchy. I refuse to believe that he was as crap as he looked, but I think he was also symptomatic of the panicky nature of our summer business. Along with Ayew he seemed to have been brought in for entirely the wrong reason. Ayew to keep Payet company in the canteen and help him argue for TV Monde5 to be on the dressing room telly, whilst Zaza was simply there because he was available. That's a bad sign and a poor reflection on Bilic for agreeing to it. Sadly, I suppose the natural in house replacement - Antonio - was already been deployed at right because of his own managerial fuckwittery, meaning he probably felt he had little choice.

As it is, he is off to Valencia and will probably bang one in against Barcelona soon. C'est la vie.

7. What Became Of The Likely Lads

Two weeks into the transfer window and I'm still trying to balance my opinion on us not having made any panic signings yet. Clearly I am against us doing stupid things in the transfer window - paying £15m for 35 year old Jermain Defoe would be a textbook example of that - but I also do acknowledge that we need some help. Moreso now that Payet has turned footballing quisling.

The thing about Antonio being brilliant on Saturday, and Byram being healthy is that it could easily convince Bilic et al that there is no need to bring in reinforcements. The reality is that most projections for the rest of the season give us about a 2% chance of going down, which doesn't seem that ridiculous as Hull are Hull, Sunderland are also Hull and Swansea have the defensive solidity of Donald Trump's iCloud password.

So I can see the temptation to stay put, tempered with the knowledge that if we do, Byram and Carroll will be involved in a tragic hoovering accident on February 1st and our cover for both of them is the same player.

It's a bit like seeing Katie Hopkins on television. On one hand that's a reason to perforate your own ear drums, but on the other you're also thinking that there's a chance someone might see her and take the opportunity to rob her house. That's a tough choice, and one you shouldn't even have to be thinking about in the first place. Much like buying Jermain Defoe.

Oh look. A fucking idiot

I can't really decide what I want from this transfer window. I see little value and the reality is that we're not in much danger any more. All things considered I'd rather that they didn't make any moves and kept the money for someone sensible to make some decisions in the summer. Given that will never happen, I expect to shortly see Defoe and Glen Johnson holding scarves above their head on the West Stand concourse, with the touchline twinkling in the distance behind them. 

8. Campaign Of Hate

All of which reminds me that this weeks events have rather neatly detracted away from that nascent anti board movement that was springing up. Despite me thinking they don't seem to know what they're doing, I generally can't fault the board too much. I grew up with the Cearns family, Terry Brown and the  broke Icelandic billionaires. I have seen things. I remember.

The problem has never struck me as one of penny pinching or general cheapness - although I'm more sympathetic to that view the more time I spend in the stadium - but more a lack of thought over how their money is spent. But those failures of judgement around how to run a Club pale into insignificance next to the prospects we faced before they took over. Intellectual heavyweight Scott Duxbury was hosting barbecues and planning for the Champions League whilst failing to notice that new Director of Football, Gianluca Nani, only had one phone number in his book - that of his old club, Brescia. In short, we were fucked.

We've had rank incompetence and borderline criminal negligence in the past and what we have now is different. Most paint the new West Ham as a slick, new brand focused corporate monolith with no soul and a desire to treat us as customers. You can take whatever side you want on that, but that deviousness has come in handy this week.

The more I hear about the Payet business, the more I think the Club have done pretty well. My initial response to be flabbergasted that we would banish him to the reserves whilst telling the world that he wanted to go. This seemed destined to crash his transfer fee, and put us on to the back foot.

However, at that point I didn't know he was on strike, and by doing this they've pretty much cornered him and his agent. He can't now pretend to be injured as nobody will believe him, and the Club can leave him unselected and save themselves plenty of cash by fining him for being on strike.

Tonight we learn that Payet's wife and children are already back in France, leaving him with the prospect of living apart from his family whilst not being paid and being called a mercenary arsehole by model footballers Robbie Savage and Chris Sutton. What's odd about that is that he doesn't seem to want to go for money, he just seems to want to go back to Marseille, which I think most West Ham fans would find eminently understandable.

If I was Payet I would fire my agent and replace him with someone more capable - like Natasha from The Apprentice who said “Do you know what guys, I can’t find my underwear. Just trying to work out if it will be any benefit to us whatsoever.” - and begin mending some fences. 

Dimi's new agent

I cannot for the life of me work out why he didn't just announce he was homesick and wanted to go home, but promise to stay until the summer so as not to leave us in the lurch. His manager was the inventor of that bullshit! The Club could have worked in the background with Marseille to structure a deal and he could have left a hero, not that he gives a shit but it has to be at least slightly better than what he has now. 

The word is that Marseille have today upped their initial £19m bid to £20m which I find hilarious, and just about the most David Sullivan thing ever. I'm not sure they actually have enough money to afford Payet, and if they don't then he really doesn't have much choice but to try and come back into the fold.  

I still think this saga might have some legs left. Unlike Dimitri if he tries to buy a pint in The Carpenters anytime soon, mind you. 

9. Can't Stand Me Now

One thing to consider about Payet, however. Don't be swayed by this belief that we don't need him solely on the basis of one good game. He leads the team in key passes per game this season with 4.1 per game. Next is Lanzini is 1.3 (all stats per WhoScored.com) and thereafter it's a fucking wasteland. That is a huge creative component suddenly removed from the side, and it's not an easy thing to replace. Feghouli might well be a capable replacement in the longer term but he's a very different type of player and he also can't score unless he's behind the goalkeeper so that hampers his effectiveness somewhat.

We are off to Middlesbrough on Saturday and you might remember that we required the goal of the season to score against them in the first game. I don't care if you think Carroll's goal was better than Payet's - you are wrong. Payet had to do several things brilliantly, whilst Carroll did one thing. If we're one down after an hour again, you might find yourself casting wishful glances at the left wing and wishing that a certain Frenchman wasn't being a dickhead.

10. The Saga

I'm exhausted after all that, so here you go. Here's a Libertines song in honour of those who stayed and fought on Saturday and gave us something back. Not to be melodramatic but we needed that. And don't look now but we've only lost 2 of our last 7 Premier League games.

Thanks West Ham, I cherish you, my love.

Crystal Palace 0 - 1 West Ham (And Other Ramblings)

1. Al Get Over It

Every now and again, you don't need a caption

2. Don't Start

I happen to know that the readers of this blog are discerning, cultural titans who generally don't lower themselves to certain topics. But no doubt you will remember the Irish musical phenomenon Boyzone, who swept through the charts in the late 90's whilst producing the kind of music that would adorn elevators and 99p stores for years to come.

What you may not know, is that their start in the music industry came when their manager brilliantly decided to book them to appear on Irish chat show "The Late, Late Show" despite having no actual music to perform.

Undeterred, they stopped off on the way to borrow their outfits from the travelling male stripper troupe "Robin Hood vs West Side Story" and proceeded to do this:

I realise that some of you may be reading this on a mobile device on a train or in an office, and I can assure you that whilst sound would certainly enhance the viewing experience - it is absolutely not required.

Anyway, going into this game at Palace - we had gotten off to a worst start than Boyzone.

3. The Win Is The Thing

If you were watching a weather satellite on Saturday evening you probably would have seen something resembling a mushroom cloud over East London, as thousands of Hammers fans let out huge sighs of relief simultaneously at about 7.30pm.

(You might also have seen a slow moving, unidentified flying object - but we'll get to Benteke's penalty later, because it was brilliant).

The value of this win cannot be understated for all sorts of reasons. It rescued us from our worst start since John Lyall was in charge, and finally meant that we had accrued more points than Avram Grant had done by the same stage during the ill fated 10/11 relegation season. With a murderers row of fixtures coming up in November, and a spate of injuries due soon, we desperately needed to get some points on the board.

If you read The H List Round Table during the week, then you'll have seen that there were some differing opinions on how long Bilic will last if things don't improve. My own take is that Gold and Sullivan will be reluctant to get rid of him without things getting quite a bit worse yet. After this weekends results we are just a point behind Leicester, for example, who nobody thinks are in crisis - although it should be pointed out that we have had a much easier set of fixtures than them so far.

And let it not be forgotten - Sunderland and Hull exist. Whilst this is extremely bad news for anyone attempting to argue that the Premier League is the best in the world, it is very good news for East London teams who have messed up their preseason.

4. The Hold Steady

So whilst Sullivan and Gold have demonstrated far too much patience in the past (Hi Avram!), I suspect they will ride out the storm with Bilic. Part of this seems to be a desire to be seen as "proper" football owners. Read any below the line comment about West Ham these days (and plenty of boardroom comments from days gone by) and it will be bound to make some disparaging comment about the "porn barons" and their "Stadio el Dildo".

Now, perhaps it's my own fault for reading the comments about anything written online, but this always amuses me as I suspect a venn diagram of those who write comments on the internet and those who use Sullivan's porn probably looks something like this:

Anyway, I don't think Bilic gets fired anytime soon.

5. Formation Flying

So, to the game! A win! I think, I can't entirely be sure as we haven't had one since those heady days when the Pound was worth more than the Euro.

There were a number of significant factors in this victory. This started when Bilic looked deep into his magic 8 ball, and deployed a 3-4-2-1 formation which seemed designed to achieve a number of points.

Firstly, Aaron Cresswell returned and was excellent until he was sent off for presumably shooting Martin Atkinson's dog at some point in the past. With doubts about his ability to last the game, the three at the back system allowed some extra cover in behind Cresswell as he rampaged forward.

It also allowed Bilic to get all of Kouyate, Noble and Obiang into the side which appears to be something he is keen to do. Kouyate therefore dropped back, and did excellently in helping to subdue Benteke.

And lastly by using two holding midfielders, neither Lanzini or Payet were troubled by any defensive duties. As such, for the first 40 minutes both roamed freely about the place dictating the game and generally leading Palace a merry dance.

This led to our excellent goal, which came after a lovely interchange between Payet and Cresswell, and a fizzing cross that Lanzini slotted home excellently. Seriously, watch Payet's foot movement before he plays Cresswell in - I haven't seen a side step so gorgeous since that Boyzone video.

Our passing had a purpose for the first 40 minutes that has been sorely lacking all season. Our midfield got close to Zaza, and tactically we outmanoeuvred Palace, loathe as Pardew was to admit it. For the first time all season it felt like our manager was doing things that were giving us the best chance to win the game rather than just randomly throwing names in to a hat and then putting the highest scorer in the league at right back, I mean, he still technically did that but we won so I don't really know what to say about that anymore.

6. Paying The Penalty  

That good start didn't continue, however, beyond the 43rd minute when Palace were awarded a penalty. This initially came about when Michail Antonio was caught the wrong side of Wilfried Zaha in a carbon copy of the incident at Chelsea last year. Martin Atkinson chose to ignore their coming together, but did punish Angelo Ogbonna who went to clear the loose ball and in doing so caught Benteke.

I thought it was a bit soft, but it didn't matter as the Belgian picked himself up and then proceeded to take a penalty that channelled Simone Zaza's effort in the summer. He took the kind of run up that you'd normally associate with a man wearing trainers on an ice rink and then casually placed it high and wide and somewhere into the stratosphere over Croydon.

"That was shit"

We then had a bit of penalty turmoil ourselves as Cresswell should have been awarded one when he was fouled by Cabaye in the area. Referee Martin Atkinson, whose view may have been blocked by Antonio, decided not to award a foul and instead booked the left back for diving. 30 seconds later he then penalised him again, this time for a non-existent foul on Zaha and off he trudged. It was a shocking decision on three fronts. It denied us a chance to go 2-0 up, made us play for 15 minutes with ten men and means we have to play Sunderland next week without Cresswell.

The latter point may end up being moot - Sunderland aren't really a football team, they're a group of well meaning performance artists - but it will at least mean we can't play this same formation again. We simply don't have two players mobile enough to operate as wing backs.

7. Simple Simone

Perhaps inspired by Benteke's homage to his penalty taking efforts, Simone Zaza ran himself into the ground. And that was admirable and helpful to the cause. But while his pressing and tracking back were excellent, he is beginning to resemble a Swiss Army knife - useful for all sorts of ancillary things but not actually any good at the things you'd ideally want a knife to do.

After half time, Palace rearranged tactically and we lost a lot of our attacking threat. By the time Zaza left the field, replaced by Calleri, he hadn't actually fashioned a decent chance.

That said, Payet still had the best chance of the half, and we ended up seeing out the game with the sort of comfort one would normally associate with Alan Pardew in a Spanish nightclub.

8. Transfer Blues (Slight Return)

One thing that jumped out about this game was that we started with only one summer signing - Zaza. I've mentioned this before, but our signings have largely been woeful and it probably wasn't a coincidence that our best performance of the season came with last years team.

There is a fascinating interview that all Hammers fans should listen to at Analytics FC with Rory Campbell, who is West Ham's Head of Technical Analysis. It is wide ranging and talks a lot about analysis in football, and how it is applied at West Ham. We have a curious structure, with Bilic alongside Campbell, Tony Henry - our Head of Recruitment - and David Sullivan in there somewhere too.

You can almost tell who is responsible for each buy. Tore is clearly a Bilic player, Calleri is a prototypical Sullivan buy given his propensity for buying promising, but ultimately shit, South American strikers. There are also links between West Ham and Deportivo Maldonado through former board member Graham Shear, which seems like a Sullivan staple.

Elsewhere, Nordtveidt and Feghouli look like picks from the analytics department, and Fernandes and Fletcher look like "potential" signings from the scouting department. Others, like Zaza and Arbeloa just look like confused, desperation buys.

They actually remind me of a story from when I was a kid. My best mate was a huge basketball fan, and was slightly obsessed with the US Olympic team, otherwise known as the "Dream Team". Back in those days TV coverage wasn't what it is now, so one Christmas he asked for the video chronicling the Dream Team's gold medal success at the Barcelona Olympics. This request was passed on to his nan, who dutifully went to Our Price and wrapped this up for his big Christmas Day surprise:

Not Michael Jordan and Magic Johnson

So my only request is that if we decide to get a new striker for Christmas, we don't let my mate's nan do the shopping. She already got Simone Zaza and Alexandre Lacazette mixed up. 

9. A Moment On The Lips 

Mark Noble has had the same haircut since he was 21 and will have it forever more, despite the fact that it won't actually be age appropriate for him until he is 75.

Imagine my surprise then, we he whipped off his shirt on Saturday to reveal a set of lips tattooed on his lower abdomen. I have nothing to add here, except that I now feel like there are probably hidden depths to Mark Noble that I had never previously detected.

10. It's Al About The Team

This is genuinely a picture of Alan Pardew celebrating a goal with a colleague