West Ham 1 - 0 Hull City (And Other Ramblings)

1. Held Up Without A Gun 

Whenever I get in the car after my wife has driven it, it is always left in the same state. The wheels are turned inwards, the indicator is on, windscreen wipers will be going and the radio will be tuned to Capital and blaring out some unlistenable shit at a ludicrous volume. That's not to say she's a bad driver - far from it - but just that once she's completed a task she doesn't spend any further time thinking about it. Even if she's killed two cats in the process.

I would encourage you to take the same approach to this game of football.

Why? Well, we were awful for a start, but worse was that Hull absolutely played us off the park. Our goalpost was chosen as Man of the Match in the Club's online poll, winning 57% of the vote, and my only question is who on earth the other 43% voted for.

Is it possible for a win to be bad? Maybe not, given that West Ham are a professional football team, so obtaining three points is their ultimate objective when they turn up to work, but this felt like a bad win.

Hull weathered a brief storm (*) in the opening exchanges, when Payet was frequently on the ball and we had enough movement around the box to cause them all sorts of problems. But they blocked our shots - yet again our shot location was unbelievably poor - and gradually hauled themselves back into the game, and then eventually into a point of total dominance. I repeat again that we were playing HULL today, as I appreciate none of the above sounds plausible.

Let me tell you, however, if I was a Hull fan I would have been reporting this game to the Police as a heist.

The West Ham team plan todays victory

(*) Light rainfall

2. Darkness On The Edge Of Town

There were signs that today was going to be a struggle from the moment a mist settled over East London like something from a Bronte novel. For the entirety of my journey to the station I was looking around in case a Mr Rochester type ran me over with a horse and let's be honest, given the quality of the service into Stratford lately, a horse is about as likely to appear as a train these days.

As this is my birthday weekend, my dad and daughter came with me so we slipped into Westfield for a bite to eat prior to the game. Sadly, it's easier to get a seat in the Houses of Parliament than in the Westfield Food Court so that took an age, and so we were generally a bit flustered by the time we got to the Stadium.  

As our tickets were purchased via the Hogwarts Triwizard Ballot system, we had no choice over the seat location and so were magically allocated a row next to the away fans yet again. I mean that literally by the way, as we had the entire row to ourselves and no one sat behind us either. This did at least mean my daughter could stand up freely without the risk of starting a twenty man brawl, which was a pleasing new development.

3. Real World

Hull are shit. They are going to be relegated and it won't be terribly close. If there are any Hull fans reading this I am not saying this to be a dickhead (although I wouldn't blame you for thinking so), but more in the spirit of providing some context to today's omnishambles. 

The visitors were clearly better than us after they got through the first twenty minutes and I honestly can't recall a team dominating us this much and losing for years. For all our nice approach work in the opening quarter we were completely unable to fashion a proper opportunity, and the nearest we came was a Payet wriggling run that seemed destined to end in a goal, but simply finished up as one of a multitude of blocked shots. 

The decline began when Aaron Cresswell managed to misplace both a pass and his cerebrum in the same movement, and gave the ball straight to Dieumerci Mbokani who ran through and hit the frame of Darren Randolph's goal. In the second half, as the pressure ramped up, an Andrew Robertson cross was deflected by Mark Noble against the base of the post, before Robertson himself hit the other post a few moments later. 

At this point most of us were wishing that the mist would roll back in, as Harry Maguire had a header cleared off the line and it became clear that we had somehow, incredibly, turned in a worse performance than the Burnley game. 

Even as Hull were schooling us it was fairly obvious that they're not much better than an top half Championship team, which isn't to denigrate their players who showed a conviction and belief that we are sorely lacking. It was interesting too that their 3-5-2 system actually works, presumably because it's the best way of playing for their squad, as opposed to the least worst option available, as it is for us. 

4. Brilliant Disguise

I wish I had the tactical and linguistic knowledge to accurately describe our second half formation to you. We started with our customary 3-4-2-1 and this had it's customary limited effect. Neither wing back could do much as Hull matched up to us exactly, and as on Wednesday we were unable to engineer any situations for them to get high up the pitch in space. 

At half time Bilic replaced Obiang with Fernandes (the former was on a booking), and Lanzini with Luis Ayew Morte. The Argentine looked like he was carrying an injury, but it could also have been that he was simply spending too much time on this particular plane of existence, and Bilic wanted someone who could run the channels between the various existential fields of consciousness, at the same time as getting the wrong side of Michael Dawson. So on came Schrodingers Ayew to simultaneously be present and absent at the same time. I'm pretty sure he played the whole second half, but fuck knows. 

What was particularly bonkers was the change in our formation. I think we began with a 4-4-2 whereby Kouyate moved to right back, Ayew went to right midfield and Antonio went up front. So for those keeping track at home that's a central midfielder at full back, a forward on the wing and a winger up front. Somewhere Alan Curbishley was purring in admiration for so many players being misused at once. Had Spurs and Burnley suddenly emerged and kicked off their game playing from East Stand to West this would have been entirely in keeping with the playground football style of play.

Rush goalie, yeah?

Thereafter we went full mental as Antonio and Carroll dropped deeper until the latter was basically playing as a screening midfielder, and heading away balls into the box like a pissed Geordie rhinoceros. What was especially disturbing about this was that at no point was it obvious what Bilic's plan was to rescue the unfurling farce in front of him. Against the worst team in the division he had his players operate under about six different tactical systems and not one of them gave us a foothold in the game. We can talk all we want about this being a results business, but performances are important too as they act as indicators of what we might have to look forward to in future, and this was absolutely dismal fare.

If we continue to play like this we will go down. We have scraped past Burnley and Hull on the back of two dubious penalties, luck like 2015 Leicester and some heroic defending from Winston Reid. That is not a recipe for continued success. 

5. This Depression

Where exactly do we go from here? On the face of it, this past week couldn't have gone much better. A point at Liverpool, two clean sheets and six points from relegation rivals has seen us pop up to the dizzy heights of 13th. 

You could, however, take the alternative view that we scraped a fortunate point at Anfield and then stumbled past two of the worst teams around by ludicrous good fortune. We barely survived Hull's left side yesterday as Robertson, who is excellent, and Sam Clucas, who is 12 years old, tore us apart.

The distressing tactical shenanigans aside, we seemed generally bereft of confidence, and played with an uncertainty that suggested the players had no idea what they were supposed to be doing. Even if that wasn't the case, it sure looked like it, and Bilic has to carry the can for such an insipid pair of performances.

To go one step further and describe this as an Allardyce type display, as some have, is actually to give it too much credit. Even when his teams were fumbling going forward, Sam's teams were generally well organised in defence and the lack of offensive ambition was usually because there was an underlying plan to ensure we didn't concede.

We have none of that now. The defence is a shambles, with nothing on the right side and only Reid looking himself in terms of decision making. Cresswell was poor today, a rarity, but he is prone to lapses of concentration and Ogbonna seems to have regressed all the way back to the womb as he sits on the edge of the 18 yard box and sucks his thumb while opposition strikers run past him like London commuters ignoring Christmas carollers.

I hate to say it, but I saw this load of shit today and wondered if Bilic can truly be the man for the job. I've not considered this previously, as I still remember that with three games left of last season we were still technically in with a shout of getting into the Champions League. However, what has become painfully evident is that last year wasn't the new normal - it was the outlier. The first 17 games of this season have been one long regression to the mean, as it has hit home just how aimless much of play has become.

But where do we go? There is no chance of a remarriage with Allardyce as that divorce was messier than was let on, so I have heard, and does someone like Mancini really inspire confidence that he is up for a relegation battle? I think Bilic will survive, because Sullivan and Gold are patient to a fault, but once the crowd turns it could be a different story. For now he's probably safe as long as the boos keep dissipating up into the sky with the rest of our atmosphere, and there continue to be peculiar scapegoats around like Brady and Nordtveit to take some of the flak.

6. Point Blank

Let's get down to it. We create nothing. We're like Mark Ronson - things are being produced, but nothing is original or creative or in any way useful to society. (Huh - it turns out I do have an opinion on that talentless prick after all).

I once again went to Paul Riley's marvellous public tableau and had a look at the shot maps from this game. Here is ours, which the BBFC have stated is an 18 certificate so no children should be seeing this.

Look at the state of that. Only once did we force Marshall to save anything from inside the area, and just generally we were fucking useless going forward. Even Payet couldn't summon any magic to help us as he had three free kicks and all were non events. 

By contrast, have a look at this shot map from HULL, the worst team in the division. 

Note how rarely we block shots compared to Hull, and many more of their goal attempts were taken from inside the area. This is the crux of our problem, and it's hardly earth shattering to state it, but this is the reason why we are so shit. We create no good chances inside the box, and our defence allow far too many attempts on our goal from close range. 

It's a good job that we are dangerous from set pieces otherwise we'd be doing a decent impression of Sunderland. So far this season we have scored six times from open play, and it's not hard to see why. No striking threat for much of the time, we can't get into the box, and have no cohesion to our attacking play. This is dire. Make no mistake that these two wins have been anything other than burglaries and it can't continue. If we play like this at Swansea and Leicester, two other dreadful teams, we will drop points we can ill afford to lose. 

7. Local Hero

Mark Noble was awarded the freedom of the London Borough of Newham this week and he repaid the favour by doing the same thing for Tom Huddlestone.

Huddlestone actually gets bigger every time I see him. He's enormous these days and by the time we get to the return fixture he'll probably look like the Stay Puft man from Ghostbusters. That didn't stop him today though as he and Jake Livermore took hold of the midfield and didn't let up until they ran out of steam in the final 15 minutes.

Noble was disconcertingly off the pace for most of this game, which was a disappointing regression after a couple of strong performances. Obiang got booked early and Bilic gave him the hook at half time which probably saved him from a red card as he was simply having to do too much defensive work to survive.

Fernandes came on and was his usual energetic self, but he lacks invention and we really lost all our drive through the middle in the second half. This made it even more distressing to see Cheikhou Kouyate being played at right back when he should have been rampaging all over the place causing havoc like a Russian hacker.

It's seems to me to have escaped a lot of attention but Kouyate's disappearance from our midfield has robbed us of our dynamism, and is thus yet another piece of evidence that our summer recruitment has failed. The lack of a right back is hurting us in multiple ways, and not the least of them is that it's forcing so many players to play out of position.

For all that, Noble notched the winner with another penalty. He slotted it home in basically the same position as his miss on Wednesday against Burnley, and once again it would have been saved had the keeper gone the right way. It continues to appear that his ability to send keepers the wrong way is an actual skill.

Here is the heat map for the latest effort from the amazing penaltykickstat website.

8. The Price You Pay

I know it won't be a surprise to you if you read this, but January is looming like the ghost of Transfer Windows past. God only knows what Sullivan made of this latest adventure in incompetence but there's no doubt he will be diving into action as soon as practicable.

I see two very obvious issues;

a) everybody knows what we need most - a right back and a centre forward - and they are also aware that we are terrible in the transfer market. This will lead to some horrific negotiations as rival clubs look at our offers and then point to Ayew and say "Yeah, but you thought he was worth £20m"

b) a lot of these current problems can probably be attributed to the sheer volume of transfers made in the summer. Sullivan does this all the time, but bringing in six or seven players at once is a nightmare, especially when they're arriving at a team with seemingly no idea what they're doing on the pitch. It's not like there is a seamless tactical framework for them to slide into. We're playing everyone out of position and praying to every conceivable deity because at this point we have no ideas left to try out. Keep an eye out for this. Bilic couldn't assimilate seven new players in the summer, with an actual pre season in which to do it. He's got no chance of doing it on the fly in January.

9. Land Of Hope And Dreams

I went to see Rogue One today and it was brilliant. I am currently sitting with a wonderful warm, contented, nostalgic feeling inside me - probably like Nigel Farage got the first time he saw American History X.

With that in mind I thought to myself that I should find something positive to say about this game.

As I had my daughter with me, she wanted a drink at half time, so we ran out to the kiosk as the fourth official held up his added on time sign. We jumped in the queue, and then moved about as much as Andre Ayew. In fact, we stayed there for the entirety of the half time break, emerging only after the second half has started.

"Wait a minute" you're thinking "that's not positive". Well, firstly you're presupposing that missing any of this game was a bad thing, but secondly I asked for, and paid for a Mars Bar. The guy went off to get that for me and then returned to tell me they'd sold out. He instead presented me with a pack of Maltesers, which have a higher RRP than Mars Bars.

I suppose it's possible that something on the pitch was positive but this would require me to watch the game again, and the only way that's happening is if the Americans capture me and take me to Guantanamo Bay and play it to me as torture. So my confectionary adventures remain the brightest spot of the afternoon.

10. Better Days

Let's not part like this, on such a sour note.

Do you remember Alessandro Diamanti? Of course you do, he was a lunatic.

Anyway, click on this link to see a frankly orgiastic set of tweets from Nikos Overheul about a performance he once put in for Bologna. It is uh-may-zing. It features this screenshot, which captures him actually taking a shot at goal from here:

This is my Christmas present to you. Please enjoy, and have a very Happy Christmas. I love you all. Except for Mark Ronson. 

West Ham 1 - 0 Sunderland (And Other Ramblings)

1. Reid-emption

"Andy decided he'd been here just about long enough. Andy did like he was told, buffed those shoes to a high mirror shine. The guards simply didn't notice. Neither did I... I mean, seriously, how often do you really look at a mans shoes? Andy crawled to freedom through five hundred yards of shit smelling foulness I can't even imagine, or maybe I just don't want to. Five hundred yards... that's the length of five football fields, just shy of half a mile." Ellis Boyd "Red" Redding - The Shawshank Redemption

After watching 94 minutes of this. #jesuisandy

2. The End Is A Beginning

Let's start at the end. After 94 minutes of a slow descent into madness, we took advantage of a full on Sunderland retreat and finally rustled up a winner from a last gasp corner. 

Now it's been an actual ploy of ours in recent weeks to drill low corners into the box for Angelo Ogbonna - our left footed centre back - to run on to and attempt a first time right footed shot. We've actually been doing that deliberately. 

This worked so well against Southampton that the ball ended up going backwards, was sliced up in the air by two more of our players, Dimitri Payet fell down a mine, Manuel Lanzini crashed a forklift truck into a tree and a GIF was born that would be replayed forever. 

Today, with our last chance of the game we therefore fashioned a chance for our other centre back Winston Reid. With careful planning Noble and Payet supplied the ball to Reid with his back to goal outside the box - just as we all dreamed they would. 

Naturally, the New Zealander did a quick Cruyff turn and smashed it in to a spot no bigger than a Rita Heyworth poster with his wrong foot because - well, Sunderland - and everybody danced in the aisles. But let's not kid ourselves here - this was the footballing equivalent of shaking a mans hand and stealing his watch. 

3. This Is A House This Is Not A Home

Jonathan Liew of the Telegraph wrote an interesting report on this match. He made the point that a house doesn't really become a home until you have a few memories in there, and I think there is some merit to that. 

There has barely been anything for us at the London Stadium other than misery thus far, which probably doesn't help either the players or fans. There is no emotional muscle memory of anything particularly positive. It's why this game with Chelsea on Wednesday feels so important - like it could be the first truly memorable event for all of us. 

I know when I think about going to games at the new stadium I don't have any of the innate confidence that I had going to Upton Park. There I believed that we had a home advantage, and that it was actually worth something. Nowadays I consider it a success that we got through this game without that escaped gorilla getting on to the pitch, drinking 5 litres of Capri Sun and crushing Adrian in a hug. 

More of a threat to Adrian than Sunderland

4. Back And Forth

This game was actually fascinating from a tactical standpoint. We started with the same 3-4-2-1 formation that worked well at Palace for 40 minutes and I genuinely think this took David Moyes by surprise. 

Like me he probably looked at our squad and couldn't fathom who could actually play competently at left wing back. Enter Edmilson Fernandes, who did a passable impression of Aaron Cresswell for about 25 minutes. Sadly, for all his lung busting efforts going forward, his one footedness meant he used all of his progressive positions to cut back inside on to his right foot. This worked alright to start with, as Payet and Lanzini were enjoying oceans of space through the middle, and Payet alone could have had a hat trick by the time half an hour had passed. On the other side, Antonio was basically playing as a winger and were it not for the fact that he's as useful with a cross as a vampire we would have been at least two up by the break. 

Moyes, however, woke up at this point and switched Duncan Watmore to the left to push Antonio back. This shut down one of our better outlets and also allowed Patrick Van Aanholt to get involved in the game. This doesn't sound significant but the left back is actually Sunderland's best attacking player. That sounds mental, but consider that the bloke in front of him is an engineering graduate called Duncan and it probably doesn't sound so weird. 

Thereafter, Sunderland were a bit more competitive and we slipped back into a state of inertia that resulted in long directionless periods of play. That oscillation in tempo is probably one reason why the crowd have struggled to get into games at home - the team are wildly inconsistent even from one passage of play to the next. 

Anyway, with us drifting along and Sunderland sort of looking dangerous without actually creating anything, Bilic responded. On came Sofiane Feghouli for Antonio and he pinned Van Aanholt back, handing us back the initiative. Sadly, this didn't lead to much but I at least found it encouraging that Bilic seemed able to adapt during the game to answer what his opposite number was doing. 

Spare a thought for Antonio though, who is staying true to an age old West Ham tradition by getting called up for England and then immediately losing the form that got him there. 

5. Get With The Flow

So one thing I found at bit odd was the amount of times we seemed to lose our defensive shape. Some of this will be down to having not a single fit full back and thus playing three players out of position in our back five. This confusion seemed a little unnecessary to me, however, given the fairly obvious nature of defending against Sunderland. 

I have thus created this easy to follow flowchart which can be laminated and stuck down the shinpad of any confused Premier League defender. 

6. Simone, Simone

Another day, another fruitless day at the office for Simone Zaza. Now I've been following that blueprint for twenty years in my job, but I work in the Financial Services sector in the City of London where being shit at your job has never yet been an impediment to anything. 

Sadly, Zaza isn't a data cudgeller like me, and even though he produced a rather nifty overhead kick at one point he still never looked likely to score in this game. We are fast approaching the point where we'll have to make a decision on whether to sign him permanently, and in a curious way I suspect the Club might like him not to score just to make that decision clear cut. 

At this juncture, the worst case scenario is that he scores twice right before we have to make the call. I have no doubt that moving to a foreign country and dealing with a new language, a new league, a new tactical set up (or lack of one, depending on how you view our start to the season) and a new set of opponents is not an easy transition. But for all the effort he puts in, he's not offering a goalscoring threat and you can't pay €25m for someone who runs about a lot. 

At present, per the brilliant Hilltop Analytics, we are scoring just 7.7% of shots we take (second worst in the league behind Southampton), and at least part of this in down to the fact that we carry no threat from our strikers. Some of it is down to the fact that we aren't taking our shots from the right place with too many long shots, or attempts from wide areas. Again though - when you aren't dangerous through the middle this is what happens. 

Look at who we rely on for goals these days: Antonio, Payet, Lanzini and now Reid. That's not a sustainable strategy. 

7. Regression Is Our Friend

Going into this game, we had conceded a league highest 16% of the shots taken on our goal. You don't need me to tell you that's terrible. It's one in six, which is like having a lottery draw to decide which of the George Lucas Star Wars films to watch on a Friday night and picking The Phantom Menace every single time. 

This will have gone down a little now with this clean sheet, but we can reasonably expect it to keep going down because even with no actual defenders to choose from we still aren't the worst defence in the league. Things will get better there. Unlike this.

8. Stadium Blues (Slight Return)

So apparently there was yet more trouble outside the ground again today. I'm getting a bit more wary of these sorts of stories because they mostly come via Twitter and therefore are no different to things you overhear in a pub.

I was thinking a bit about this on Saturday though. It seems obvious to most that away fans should be held in the ground after games to allow the home fans to disperse and prevent most of this friction. And yet this doesn't happen.

In thinking about it I began to wonder if it isn't simply a case that holding fans in the stadium wouldn't actually do any good, because it takes so long for everybody to get away from the ground? Driving is basically impossible, so most people come via train or tube. With 50,000 people to get rid of, it simply cannot be done as quickly as it used to happen at Upton Park.

There, with the myriad side streets and ways out from the ground, people could disappear away from the area easily, and away fans could be frog marched back to the station by the Police with very little hassle.

At the London Stadium all that would happen by holding away fans back is that you'd piss them off - especially if they've conceded a 94th minute goal - and then you'd be releasing them out to.....the back of a very long queue.

I'm not saying this is definitely the case or that I have any inside knowledge on the topic but as I was thinking about it, that made a sort of sense to me. As such, the fans are all being released together and scuffles are ensuing because that's what apparently happens when people see other people wearing different colour scarves. Something to keep an eye on for Wednesday.

9. The American Dream

As an aside, I went to the NFL game today at Twickenham and it was an absolute disaster getting out and back to the station, even though I was in a box and had the luxury of waiting behind and letting the crowds die down a bit. Don't be envious - the only beer was Budweiser which really should be illegal to serve to humans. Give it to gorillas if it absolutely has to be "brewed".

I don't think Stratford is great from a transport perspective, but the reality is that no stations are big enough to cope with funnelling that many people out in a short space of time. I could probably do without David Gold telling me that West Ham have the best transport links in the country though. Of course you'd fucking think that David - you get chauffeured to games in your Bentley. I suspect that is an ever-so-slightly more luxurious experience than squeezing on to the 18.02 train back to Romford with hundreds of other fans and large numbers of nonplussed Westfield shoppers.

Or, as was the case on Saturday, going on a replacement bus service where, much like Bladerunner, I saw things that you people can barely imagine.

10. Some Houses Are Homes

I know you don't come here for my political opinion - but in case you missed it, I found this a fascinating and uplifting story.

Rio Ferdinand, Bobby Zamora and Mark Noble are helping to build social housing in deprived areas in London and the South East. I don't fully understand either the logistics or the potential return on their investment from that article, but even if it isn't entirely philanthropic then it's at least partly philanthropic, which seems to be a good deal more philanthropy than one sees from the average highly paid sportsman.

And with that I shall depart. Here's a picture of Mark Noble looking lovingly at a fish to act as a counterpoint to any distaste you may feel about social housing.

West Ham 1 - 0 Accrington Stanley (And Other Ramblings)

1. Respite, Thy Name Is Stanley

I was pretty undecided about going tonight. I had a ticket, but due to the ongoing problems at the ground I wasn't prepared to take my daughter. The Club gave plenty of assurances today about how they'd increased security, but given they forgot to take a back four with them to West Brom I wasn't quite prepared to take them at face value.

2. When Losers Are Winners

In the end I need not have worried. Just under 40,000 fans were there and the overriding feeling was one of ennui and boredom. Around 500 Accrington Stanley fans spent the evening having fun and going bonkers behind one of the goals, and their team did them proud. In the end, nobody really lost tonight.

As well as scraping through courtesy of Dimitri Payet's sumptuous last minute free kick, West Ham also won off the pitch as we all got through the night without fighting with each other - which really shouldn't be newsworthy but absolutely is. Indeed, the crowd probably deserve some credit for tonight as they turned up but didn't turn, either on each other or the team.

Anyone quibbling about the atmosphere isn't accurately recalling these equivalent games at Upton Park. These matches are never enjoyable. There is no winning, only not losing, and that isn't quite the same thing. The only exception perhaps being the Battle of Green Street of 2009.

3. Are You Not Entertained?

Not really, Dimitri, but I still love you. 

4. The Struggle Is Real

Make no mistake - on the pitch, West Ham were dreadful tonight. The first half was the worst 45 minutes of entertainment I've been subjected to since my wife once made me watch an episode of Scandal. Disjointed and with no real pace to our play, we were played off the pitch by an Accrington team who actually carried far more threat then West Ham. 

Things improved in the second half, although short of Arvelo Arbeloa accidentally electing Donald Trump into office during the interval it's hard to imagine how it could have gotten worse. 

Payet, Lanzini and Antonio were introduced, which is kind of like asking The Three Tenors to sing with Boyzone, and things perked up but not to a significant degree. Accrington continued to press, and their heroic efforts were almost rewarded when Sean McConville fired narrowly over late in the second half. 

By the time Payet stepped up, I just wanted it to end. I didn't really care how - after 96 minutes of tedium, there was an overhwelming feeling of "let's just all get the fuck home, eh lads?". The best thing about the goal was the inevitability of it. It just looked right. Centrally placed so the keeper couldn't tell which way it was going, and far enough out that it could get up and over the wall easily enough. As the ball arrowed in, the guttural roar that followed was more of relief than anything else. 

5. Zaza Some More

I decided to pay close attention to Simone Zaza tonight given that he is 12 games from triggering a €25m transfer and doesn't appear to have any control of his legs. 

By my estimation, he managed one successful pass tonight. In 96 minutes. That's not an exaggeration - I literally only remember one time he retained possession, with a little return pass to Arthur Masuaku in the first half from a throw in. I'm sure my PlayerCam might have been a little off as I took to the drink before, during and after this game, but it generally felt like an astonishing display of ineptitude from an international player. 

He did have one very decent effort well saved in the second half, but generally Zaza looked like a rich guy who had paid £250,000 at a charity auction to play up front with his heroes in a testimonial. 

It's three games, so we don't need a rush to judgement quite yet. Zaza played for Juventus and Italy and has a pedigree that can't be denied, but he has shown the square root of nothing thus far. He has yet to hold the ball up with any regularity and his link play is right up there with my grasp of Sanskrit. At this point his only vaguely enticing quality is that he is not Jonathan Calleri, which is really not an endorsement.

Let's be honest, had Ashley Fletcher turned in these three performances we would have patted him on the head, said "You're not quite ready yet" and sent him on loan to Crewe.

There is an enormous elephant in this particular room at present. If, ten games from now, Zaza is still this bad will Bilic continue to start him if both Carroll and Sakho are still out? He is better than Calleri but cannot possibly be worth a €25m outlay, and yet the chances of us having better options for every game for the rest of the season are almost zero.

It will be fascinating to see whether boardroom considerations trump tactical ones as we struggle on through our dark night of the soul. 

6. What's Gone Wrong?

Even allowing for the occasion, we lacked any coherence to our play last night. There is a palpable difference between this years team and last that seems to begin with our full backs. Last season Cresswell and Jenkinson played almost as auxiliary wingers at times, giving us a thrust to our wide play that has been absent so far this time around.

Our full backs have been far deeper this season which has had the curious double impact of weakening our attacking options but doing nothing to make us any more defensively solid. Admittedly, this has been in part due to our central defenders also starting off the year like they've dosed up on lithium, but the point remains. We look terrible at the back, although Arbeloa does at least look like he wants to play there, thus putting him ahead of the other contenders for the role.

Our central midfield continue to remind me of Julia Roberts in Ocean's Eleven. I can see that they are there, but I am yet to discern exactly what they are doing or why. That said, I actually thought Pedro Obiang was our best player in the first half yesterday - take that in the same way as me saying "Fifty Shades of Grey" is the best book in the trilogy - and probably should be in the side on Sunday, meaning he will doubtless not be seen again until Christmas.

Shouldn't be playing against Southampton

The best functioning part of the team is the front three of Payet, Lanzini and Antonio who looked miles better than anyone else when they were introduced. Sadly, the men they replaced - Feghouli and Tore - were dreadful, and it remains to be seen how we would do in the long term if any of the former trio get a serious injury. 

For our attackers, please see above. We're in trouble unless Andy Carroll and Diara Sakho come back fit and raring to go, but that seems about as likely as one of the Eggheads being arrested on suspicion of murder. 

7. Oxford Blues

I'm concerned about Reece Oxford. If he doesn't play in games like this, then I don't really know when he will play at all. Presently, he looks like a central midfielder to me, based solely on the way that he was dismantled by Romelu Lukaku at Everton last year, although one would think he would grow into a defensive role as he matures physically. 

With him refusing to sign a new deal, it seems odd that we haven't tried to get him some more game time but I can understand Bilic not wanting to hitch his wagon to the star of a 17 year old feeling his way into the game. 

If he does go, it will be hard to see him rot away in the Manchester City development squad for three years before trying to pick up the pieces of his career at Sunderland. Trying to leave my biases aside for a moment, I can't really remember much good coming from young players leaving mid table Premier League teams to go to one of the bigger vultures and I hope he stays. 

But if my career prospects were being blocked by mediocre players like Nordtveidt and Collins I suppose I might start to consider leaving too. An Oxit, as I suppose it would be called in the current climate of portmanteau slogans. 

We started this game with no English players on the pitch. Any way you cut it, that's not a great enticement for homegrown youngsters to stick around. 

8. Who Are They? English Football, That's Who

A word then, for Accrington Stanley, in a way that I hope isn't patronising. They were great tonight. Their team played excellently and with no little verve and skill. There were technical limitations, of course, but they persevered and deserved more than to have their hopes shattered by a 96th minute piece of Payet magic. 

It is never hard to find things to hate about the modern game: Mourinho, Rooney, breakaway European leagues, the general concept of Chelsea, FIFA and of course, Sheffield United all loom large, but there is still a beating heart to the English game that lies in places like Accrington. To watch them come to a 60,000 seater stadium and go toe to toe with a Premiership team was heartwarming and a fantastic achievement by them, however anemic we may currently be. For that reason alone, I think they were the big winners of the night. 

9. Radio Rental

So, speaking of Chelsea. How's that new radio system coming along Karren?

His last words were: "how hard can it be?"