West Brom 0 - 0 West Ham (And Other Ramblings)

I am a terrible Englishman.

I do not drink tea or coffee, and society is simply not able to cope with that. I have lost count of the conferences, meetings and social visits that have ended with me drinking nothing while a host looks on disconcertedly, or worse, scrabbling round in a distant cupboard for some Ribena. Which I also do not drink, but am now forced to out of a desire not to be impolite.

But, to an outsider, context is everything.

I'm not sat in that front room drinking the purple teeth destroyer because I want to, but because it's the least worst thing available to me.

"Who said you could attack?"

And so to the footballing caliphate of West Bromwich, where modern practices are eschewed and shunned in favour of a safety first football that will one day be studied by great physicians of the future as the first cause of mass eye-bleeding in the English Midlands.

Or put another way, this was so terrible a game of football that shortly after the final whistle blew, ISIS claimed responsibility for it.

But all of this has to be placed in a wider context. I'm not sure Slaven Bilic wants to drink this particular brand of Ribena either, but he is left with little choice. The start to the season has been so dreadful and his team so inept that he simply had to act, and the basis of any such self renewal is always the defence.

And so it has come to pass that Bilic has returned to the 3-4-3 formation that best suits his slow backline and least suits his current attackers, and the results have been two clean sheets, four points and great swathes of existential anguish.

Whatever your opinion on the quality of these last two games, one can't deny that it feels an awful lot better to have four points in the bank and to be moaning about the manner in which we gained them rather than being, well, Crystal Palace.

***

This was a curious game in so much as it felt that we were very clearly the better side but the xG map below from Caley Graphics doesn't agree. This is a reflection that while we came closest to scoring, those chances themselves weren't really very good. Instead we relied on individual excellence to fashion something from unpromising situations. Sort of like when Susanna Reid rolls her eyes at some shit Piers Morgan is saying and somehow continues to be professional while working with an hyperactive adolescent orang-utan. 

Entirely appropriate

And so Pedro Obiang brilliantly spotted Ben Foster trying to tunnel his way out of the stadium to play for a team where he wasn't the main creative force, and audaciously lobbed him from all of 40 yards, only to see it crash back off the bar. Chicharito also burst through on to a Carroll flick on and was cynically hacked down by Foster when through on goal, albeit heading away from the danger area. 

But as far as goal scoring chances go, we didn't create too much that would usually result in a goal. Our xG of 0.2 is the lowest I can ever remember from us, which will be hard to comprehend for some given we hit the bar, but if you think about it this makes sense. If Obiang were to try that shot again (which he did in the second half), he would be very unlikely to score (he put the second effort on to the roof). All this is saying is that we didn't create much by way of high quality chances even if we by and large dominated the game in most ways. 

Our best chance was probably a glancing header from Fonte that, on another day, could have flashed into the corner. This is promising because we relied heavily on set pieces last year, although the gap between Payet and Cresswell in terms of delivery is, um, noticeable.

But mostly this was fairly agricultural fare. There were long balls to Carroll once more, and a near complete reliance on Antonio to carry the ball and fashion chances from deeper positions.

Furthermore, Chicharito was once more banished to the left as we continue to sacrifice all our attacking options at the altar of CarrollBall. There was a moment in the second half when Bilic had Arnautovic, Antonio, Hernandez and Carroll on the pitch at the same time during a brief foray into the realms of Ossie Ardiles. This came about because James Collins was injured and Bilic replaced him with Arnautovic and returned Antonio to right wing back AS THOUGH LAST SEASON NEVER HAPPENED.

It boggles my mind, but we're apparently back there again.

***

Reactions to these columns are always pretty interesting, even if not always complimentary. Some of you were upset last week that it was all too negative - why can't you take more positives out of being bottom of the league? - while others think it's all a bit repetitive. For the former I offer no apology, but the latter is, I think, a problem. Some of that is the natural spin off from writing match reports about the same team, which will always lend itself to repetition, but also because we do seem to be stuck in some sort of footballing Mobius Strip. I can't quite figure out if I'm doing thirty eight different match reports a season or the same match report thirty eight different times.

West Ham's road to recovery

For that reason, I can see some glimmers of hope from Saturday, which is kind of ironic because I'm pretty sure that some West Brom fans were engaged in a mutual suicide pact towards the end.

It wasn't much by way of hope, admittedly, but the faint whisper that Bilic is at least seeing what his problems are and making some tangible moves to fix them. We remain a see saw of a team, whereby walking up one end simply causes the other to shoot up. As such, two clean sheets and barely any chances given up suggests that he's temporarily fixed the defensive side of things, but it's clearly been done at the expense of our attack.

In reality that's the right way round, because if you don't concede you can still pick up points, but when you concede two goals every week it places an intolerable strain on the attack. So we have gone with three centre backs and for the most part we look very comfortable although it should be acknowledged that both Huddersfield and West Brom had all the offensive ambition of the Swiss Navy.

Spurs will be the acid test of our nascent recovery. They are a proper team who will be smarting from their last visit and who need a result to stay in touch, even at this early stage. Defensively all our success against them has come with a high press, so I don't really know how we will get on with that on Saturday if Carroll is playing. He doesn't offer the mobility of Calleri and Ayew, who did it so well last season, which causes concern as we don't really want Spurs to have time to pick us apart.

Behind him, with just two in the centre we run the risk of being outnumbered again, leaving Kouyate and Obiang to do too much physical work. It also seems feasible to expect Spurs to target those wide open spaces in behind our full backs. West Brom didn't do this because the last one of Tony Pulis's full backs to cross the half way line was stapled to a horse for a week as punishment.

So, you can say that Bilic picked a fabulous time to get his defence in order, by doing it against two of the least ambitious teams around. Alternatively you could posit that he wasted a great opportunity here to kick the season into a higher gear with an away win at a team who were actively avoiding attacking as if they were some kind of Gandhi tribute act.

***

In examining why we play three at the back - everyone is old and slow and doesn't really know what they're supposed to be doing at any given moment - it's probably worth considering why the 4-2-3-1 has stopped working.

Usually in this formation the two full backs bomb forward, and the deepest lying central midfielder drops into the back line to make a three. There are those of you with coaching qualifications who can better expound on what this does to the game, but looking back to 2014-15 and 2015-16 when we were at our recent peak, we had Alex Song to superbly fill this role. Looking more widely around world football you will also see players like Mascherano - the Catalan Hayden Mullins - Sergio Busquets and David Luiz floating around in these roles.

This fluidity of movement is what separates the elite from teams like us, but it does explain why centre backs quite often appear in midfield roles without explanation. Song fell away for us in 2015-16 but Noble was outstanding that season, and furthermore having Dimitri Payet in your side can help detract from a lot of other deficiencies.

I suspect that Havard Nordtveit was bought for this purpose last year, and it might also explain why Bilic has been so keen to blood the likes of Reece Oxford and Declan Rice. Each are converted centre backs who can play in midfield, and should be able, theoretically, to drop back and assist without the mass panic and confusion that seems to accompany it these days.

With none of these options really paying off, Bilic targeted William Carvalho and might well have got him if everyone involved in the process wasn't a fucking lunatic. But he didn't, and as a result, with Obiang the only player fit enough and impressive enough to occupy the role, Bilic seems to have decided that the chaotic defending being offered by the four at the back can't continue.

What is noticeable, however, is that going to a back three seems to render us pretty impotent going forward. However, that is in contrast to last season, when we actually looked quite fluid at times and produced our better displays with that line up.

The Geordie in the room here is that when we played that way we didn't have Andy Carroll as the focal point of our attack. Playing him, and smashing long balls in his vague direction, seems to negate other players. Hernandez, as seen below, is visibly uninvolved in games when shunted out wide and Kouyate too seems strangely neutered.

Times Javier Hernandez touched the ball and then pondered firing his agent

So while I respect the point, and acknowledge the necessary evil of getting down into the mud and sewers to battle with Huddersfield and West Brom, I'll also add that I really struggle to see how this formation beats better teams.

***

I'm guessing that the coach journey back from this game was an interesting one. Earlier, Carroll went off shaking his head in disgust at the notion of being substituted, with all the self awareness of a man who has actually dyed a section of his pony tail blonde. Already we had seen Chicharito withdrawn, trudging off with demeanour of a man hired to perform magic tricks at a party but then being asked to serve the trifle instead. Neither Ayew or Sakho will be happy on the bench, while the notoriously zen like Arnautovic isn't going to last long as a substitute before going apeshit in some highly public fashion.

That just leaves Antonio, who was shunted back into his least favourite position and suddenly I am left to wonder if Bilic is going to achieve the stupendous feat of giving all these players gametime and somehow keeping none of them happy?

Adding Manuel Lanzini back into the mix further complicates matters, although the reality there is that the Argentine walks straight back in and the rest must fight it out. In the end, I can't really tell you what I think Bilic will do because none of these forward players beyond Antonio and maybe Arnatouvic make much sense for this system.

My biggest gripe with the use of Hernandez isn't so much that he is starting out wide because he can drift infield, but more that he is so deep. It doesn't seem like it should be beyond the wit of man to conceive of a system whereby we get our penalty box striker into the box.

In real terms, it's actually hard to make a case for Hernandez playing if this is going to be the system we employ from here. Arnautovic would do the wide job better and is a more natural fit. Antonio is untouchable on the other flank, leaving only the central position to decide. I suspect Bilic will go with Carroll even though the fans will clamour for Hernandez, and Sakho is going to stay in a bench based purgatory until he can resume his transfer wanderings in January.

In reality, that's probably a sensible decision because I just can't see Hernandez as a lone central striker in this formation. All of which does rather beg the question - what formation did they buy him to play in?

***

It's never a great sign upon entering a football stadium when you are presented with a rock hammer and a Rita Hayworth poster and given the option of "doing a Shawshank" at some point in the second half if it all gets a bit much. But that's the way of it at The Hawthorns.

I actually feel rather sorry for West Brom fans, who are trapped in what I call the "Scudamore Snare" - the club is reliant upon Premier League status and thus this must come before all else. No notion of entertaining football can be considered without first weighing up if it would jeopardise their safety. It is the way of things for mid table sides and we were there ourselves just a couple of seasons ago.

And so it comes to pass that even when they have a good transfer window and make exciting signings like Kieran Gibbs, Oliver Burke and Grzegorz Krychowiak (taking the well trodden path from Seville to Paris to West Bromwich), there is still a feeling that Pulis has only done all of that with a view to turning them each into a centre back. Even Gareth Barry popped up, so slow that he could play for us, and sat in front of the back four looking to break up play. There wasn't much ambition on show.

But for all that, they are a team who know how they play. Each of their players understands exactly what is required of him, and each carries that job out diligently. It's not interesting to watch, but it's effective.

By comparison to us, one would say they are at least in possession of an identity, and an obvious path forward. Buy better players and add some attacking intent and it's not hard to squint and see them in the top ten regularly.

By contrast, Bilic is behind them now. He is striving to find that sense of self and is presumably aware that while his current system seems tailor made to extract the best from Jose Fonte, it is similarly rendering Cheikhou Kouyate almost totally ineffective.

Bilic is a bright man, and will know all this, and the advantage he holds over Pulis is probably that if he gets his system right his attacking players will deliver more for him in the long run.

But perhaps the most pertinent question of all is this: if the way forward from here is to take this Allardycian approach to the game whereby we fixate on defence, respect the point and try to build on top, then why would you ever employ anyone other than Allardyce to implement it? Bilic is hampered here by the fact that he took an Allardyce team and advanced it, before regressing with terrifying speed once Payet downed tools. Few would argue that the current team, in this vein of poor form stretching back to the beginning of 2017, are much different to any of Allardyce's teams.

Miss me much?

And here's the rub. You can play like this to steady the ship for a while but eventually fans will want more. There has to be more to life than respecting the point at West Brom. Thus, the search for an identity goes on but it strikes me that the one you probably don't want to take on at West Ham would be that of Sam Allardyce.

West Ham 2 - 2 West Brom (And Other Ramblings)

1. Institutional Memory

Music is a funny thing. It is entirely subjective and I think most people understand that, yet if you don't get an artist it is unlikely that you will ever be objective enough to consider changing your mind.

As an example, I cannot even remotely understand the attraction of Muse and yet will look at you with great incredulity if you suggest that The Stone Roses debut album is anything other than a work of staggering genius. Subjectivity and all that.

And so I come, reluctantly, to Tony Pulis and West Brom. At home. In the freezing cold. With no fit strikers. In February. I wanna, I wanna, I wanna be abroad.

Nothing can convince me that Tony Pulis is good for football. I have seen too many games involving his teams, and had too many days ruined by the grim fare he offers up in the name of pragmatism. As such, I accept that this was a ninety minute exercise in confirmation bias, and I also have to accept that - in this regard alone - Tony Pulis is my Muse.

Anti-football, thy name is Pulis

Whilst it might be true that not all superheroes wear capes, it's also equally true that not all supervillains wear a tracksuit, white trainers, baseball cap and look like an angry British tourist on a Mediterranean cruise complaining to the purser that he can't get his Only Fools and Horses DVD's to work on the TV in his cabin. BUT SOME DO.

2. Posse Comitatus

If playing against a Pulis side is torture, then playing against them when they've taken an early lead is positively horrific. Just two games had passed since we chose not to recruit a right back or centre forward in the transfer window, and the footballing gods decided that was quite enough of that and thus we started this game with both Andy Carroll and Sam Byram missing from the starting line up, in a development as predictable as that new Pirates of the Caribbean film being shit.

We actually started this game fairly brightly but that all turned to shit when, on five minutes, Noble needlessly played Feghouli into trouble outside the box. The Algerian went down far too easily, although he was probably fouled, and the resulting loose ball was picked up by Nacer Chadli, who skipped past a static Kouyate and fired the visitors ahead.

It was a dreadful goal to concede in every sense, and condemned us to the most fruitless hour of attacking since Piers Morgan took on JK Rowling on Twitter and got roasted like a Jersey Royal. There was no lack of effort but we resembled a wave trying to crest a sea wall as we tried repeatedly to broach the huge line of Northern Irish Goliaths that Pulis strung across his penalty area like lighthouses.

The primary requirement to play for West Brom isn't really to have any football skill, but if you can't enter a Tube carriage without ducking then you're in. Having taken the lead, the Baggies made no noticeable attempt to add to their lead, which made it all the more galling when Salomon Rondon nearly did exactly that by crashing a fine twenty yard volley against the bar.

Pulis was so infuriated by Rondon needlessly getting himself into such an advanced position that he immediately withdrew his other "attacking" players and had them stand on the half way line pointing and laughing as the Venezuelan fruitlessly chased after the myriad long balls aimlessly booted over his head for the rest of the afternoon.

As the xG map above from @11tegen11 shows, we created plenty of chances and on another day could have won this game comfortably, but that is not how football works. The best chance of all doesn't even appear here, when Antonio challenged Ben Foster for a goal line header and when the ball fell at his feet, Foster abandoned all pretence at being a footballer and executed a Stone Cold Stunner to make Steve Austin proud. Like everything else in this game, the decision didn't go our way.

For all our bluster, we never looked like getting anywhere until the match turned in the 53rd minute. Chadli made the mistake of attempting to get the ball into the box, which was quite enough for Pulis who hauled him off immediately and replaced him with centre half Jonny Evans, and getting closer to his life long dream of fielding a 1-10-0 formation.

With all pretence at attacking now abandoned by West Brom, we flooded forwarded with no fear of retaliation. With Cresswell having gone off at half time, we were nominally playing 3-5-2, but it was much closer to 2-4-3-1 as Fonte and Reid minded the store while everyone else charged forward.

Thus, with an hour gone Lanzini thumped a long range effort goalward, which Foster brilliantly tipped on to the bar, and God finally revealed himself to have a sense of decency as the rebound was tucked in by Feghouli. On the touchline Pulis fell to his knees, crestfallen at not having enough central defenders on the pitch.

We continued to attack but without the necessary guile to open up a well drilled and, frankly, enormous West Brom back four. At this stage I couldn't stop my mind wandering to the exotic port of Marseille, but before I could yearn too lustily, Lanzini was at it again as he cut inside and smashed a swirling left footer past a static Foster from outside the box, with only three minutes remaining. The keeper didn't move a muscle because - and this is so glorious it gets it's own line -

he was unsighted by all the fucking centre halves on the edge of his box. 

But it's not that kind of season for us, and having lollygagged from the 6th minute West Brom got the point they didn't deserve when Evans outjumped everyone to head in a 95th minute corner, in time added on due to West Brom timewasting. And Pulis turned to me and gave me the wanker sign, because he might be the death of football but if you can't defend a corner then he'll kill you all the same.

3. Guns Not Butter

On the point of time wasting, I read an interesting suggestion the other day that matches should last only 60 minutes, but that the ball must be in play for the entirety of that period. Thus, when the ball goes out of play the clock is simply stopped and even if the keeper from - and let's just pick a team at fucking random here - oooooh, let's say West Brom, decides to retie his boots, adjust his socks, scrape non existent mud off his studs, ring his wife to check he has locked the back door and have a shave, before taking a goal kick it would make no difference.

I especially enjoyed the moment after Lanzini's goal when a disconsolate Foster wandered to his post and scraped some mud off his boots like a footballing Wall-E. Unable to process what had just happened, he simply reverted to his core programming and did something he hoped would waste some time.

West Brom did this shit all day, and whilst I accept and appreciate a bit of professionalism I actually felt that referee Michael Oliver's biggest failing on the day was to do nothing about it. Foster should have been booked in the first half, as could any of the back four, including right back Allan Nyom who didn't even bother doing it properly, instead just standing inert with the ball at throw ins until Oliver was forced to blow the whistle to hurry him up.

Now, you probably shudder at the idea of a 60 minute game, but a 2013 study by Soccermetrics found that the ball was effectively in play during the 2011/12 season for only 55 minutes per game. This will have moved about a bit, but I have yet to see any study putting that figure above an hour. And fair enough too - modern players are being asked to gegenpress their little hearts out and in game recovery is vital. By the way, that study found Stoke to be the Premier League team with the lowest average. See if you can remember who their manager was in 2012.

I may sound like I'm being ungracious, so I should say that the West Brom team carried out their managers instructions to a tee. No opportunity was passed up to waste time, disrupt play, and generally chisel out a tiny portion of the still barely beating heart of modern football. And their fans no doubt love it, riding high as they are in eighth place.

Fair play to them, but there is a price to pay for this bullshit. It eats away at your soul. There is that horrible feeling of being in that famous Mitchell and Webb sketch where they suddenly see the skulls and Nazi memorabilia and realise they might be the bad guys.

Yes, you fucking are lads

Alternatively, this feels like a Dorian Gray situation. Somewhere in Adrian Chiles's loft there is a slowly decaying portrait of West Brom, crumbling with every feigned injury and delayed throw in. I've read that book, and I'm telling you now that I cannot fucking wait for the end of this particular version.

4. Game On

We attempted 28 crosses in this game, completing just 7 of them, and never really looking dangerous in doing so. This is partially because the West Brom defence is populated by Easter Island statues, but also because crosses aren't a particularly effective way of scoring goals. A study by Liverpool blogger Bass Tuned To Red showed that when teams amass lots of crosses, it is generally as a result of being behind and falling into a desperate pattern attempting to recover the game. You should read the piece, but a relevant couple of quotes are shown here:

"What is clear when reviewing the matches in question is that there has often been an air of desperation about the team doing all the crossing.....if your team is struggling in a match and sending in a truck load of crosses, don’t be too surprised if they fail to win."

What was clear in the second half especially, was how West Brom were happy to let us shovel the ball out wide. Our two most frequent pass combinations were Fonte to Kouyate, and Kouyate to Feghouli, which accorded with my recollection of us attacking frequently down the right to little avail.

On another day, when Andy Carroll was on the pitch and Jonathan Calleri was on the beach, we might have capitalised but as it was, cross after cross bounced off the Blackpool Towers in the middle and we had to rely on Lanzini for inspiration.

This is actually a little unfair on Calleri, who I thought showed flickers of decency in his cameo. The trouble is that he is on a loan-to-buy arrangement and won't have the time or opportunity to prove himself (Does that sound familiar, folks?). He'll be good somewhere, but it won't be here. You know it, I know it, he knows it. Just brace yourself - he's going to be that guy that your mates ask you about in a year or two and say "Hang on a minute - didn't he used to play for you?".

5. Evidence Of Things Not Seen

Seeing the line up for this game had me wondering about Bilic. This was a Redknappian selection, where players were crowbarred into positions they weren't suited for simply to get them in the team. Steve Lomas at right back, Trevor Sinclair in central midfield, Ian Pearce at right wing back. This was Bilic's version of I Am The Resurrection. 

The player most under pressure as a result of all this is Mark Noble, with Pedro Obiang a suddenly consensus pick for Hammer of the Year as a result of scoring and playing well at Southampton. Weirdly, this didn't seem to generate the same credit for Noble who did the exact same thing.

In the event, both did well. Obiang had his passing boots on and was instrumental in slicing open the West Brom rearguard on multiple occasions with pinpoint, searching through balls. Noble did his bit too, attempting more tackles than any other Hammer and generally getting on the ball plenty. There is courage in that, when you are 1-0 down at home to the footballing Antichrist and the fans are getting antsy.

As @11tegen11 shows in his pass map, both Noble and Obiang got on the ball, but neither were as influential as Lanzini, who had a marvellous game and continues to be the new partner giving us all a reason to smile after divorce from our glamorous French spouse. His movement and vision here was several levels above that of his opponents, and many of his team mates.

All up, I haven't really got any complaints about our performance in this game. We dominated West Brom everywhere and when the initial stuff failed, Bilic gave Pulis a massive tactical fuck you and stopped bothering to defend altogether. That overloading of attacking players eventually wore down the resilience of the visiting automatons and should have got us more than a point.

My issue is not with the performance of this team, but whether this is the best team we could have fielded.

6. Internal Displacement

Sam Byram was actually on the bench for this game but Bilic simply avoided the decision around dropping Noble or Obiang by playing his best central midfielder - Kouyate - at right back. If Byram is truly not a better right back than Kouyate then we need to give up on that experiment now and move him on. Alternatively, if Bilic just doesn't want to make a tough decision and drop an established player then maybe it is he who needs to be moved on. That's a nonsense, of course, but man - this selection was a mess.

It's a cliche, and cliches are rarely true, but at present it's unlikely that our best eleven contains our best eleven players. The ludicrously unbalanced nature of our squad means we have lots of midfielders and barely any full back or striking cover, and the comparison isn't just whether Kouyate is a better right back than Byram, but also whether he is a better central midfielder than either Obiang or Noble.

To my mind, the answer to that latter question is demonstrably "Yes" and as such, we are weakening ourselves each week we don't play him there. His five goals last season are more than Obiang and Noble have scored between them so far this year, and with our near constant struggle to get advanced support to Carroll in games against better teams, we badly need his athleticism further up the pitch.

I have no real answer to the dilemma, but playing players out of position eventually always goes wrong. They grow resentful of their lack of opportunity, they hate being exposed for failing to do things they aren't good at - Antonio, Nordtveit and now Kouyate have all given away goals in that area - and it can't be great for Byram to be behind his supposedly temporary replacement, especially as he was found out the first time he had to do any actual defending in this game.

Devoted fans will remember the episode of The Simpsons when the bosses at the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant replaced Homer with a chicken, and I might have actually reached the point where I would be fine with us trying this.

7. Post Hoc, Ergo Propter Hoc

So, how badly exactly is the lack of a right back costing us this season? I mean, it should be said that the lack of any acting ability has never stopped Sean Bean earning a living. After an, admittedly very brief, analysis I listed the goals conceded that I think were the fault of the temporary right back of the day, and have cost us points. I held myself to a couple of simple rules;

- any game started by Byram is excluded on the grounds of him being a right back
- any game where we got battered is also excluded, as it feels like losing 5-1 at home can't really be blamed on one single player

Chelsea (a) - Antonio - 1 point
Spurs (a) - Antonio/Nordtveit - 3 points
Liverpool (a) - Nordtveit - 2 points
Man Utd (h) - Nordtveit - 1 point
West Brom (h) - Kouyate - 2 points

OK, so let's start with the flaws in this analysis. Nobody can determine with any certainty the impact of a single player, or of one single moment in a game. Well, nobody except Lord Griffiths, Henry Winter and Sheffield United fans, but sadly they weren't available to me as I think they were otherwise occupied posting online abuse of Jessica Ennis-Hill for not wanting to be associated with a rapist.

You can fuck off too, Colin

So, please don't tell me that what I have done here is ludicrous, as I already know that. I'm like the grown men who go on Soccer AM and sit in the "stand". I know I look stupid, but I'm carrying on regardless.

What this excludes is any mistakes made by Byram, as he is human and allowed to make them, and crucially he is actually a right back. It also ignores games like Arsenal and Southampton at home where we gave up goals down our right side, but were getting creamed anyway so I can't say it really cost us any points.

But - and this is tenuous but reasonable - it has cost us something. I've suggested nine points above, which is way too high in reality, but there are points lost this season caused by the ridiculous hubris of thinking we didn't need a full back. I don't know who is to blame for that, but whoever it is needs to look at these numbers and weep. Whatever method you use, and whatever number you come up with, our season would look a whole lot better if we hadn't inflicted ourselves with such a brain numbingly stupid wound entirely of our own making.

8. A Change Is Gonna Come

So Slaven Bilic finally lost his shit today. This has been coming for quite some time, and in fairness, I'm amazed he has lasted this long. We missed out on the Champions League last season at least partially because we had no right back (Jesus fucking Christ, Sullivan) but also due to a run of awful, horrendous decisions in huge late season games.

That continued into this season, with the records now showing that any West Ham player getting sent off these days has a fifty percent chance of having it overturned. All teams feel they are hard done by, and maybe they are - who knows, I don't give a shit about what happens to Leicester or Sunderland or Everton. Well, except for the fact that I wish bad things upon Koeman's whinging thugs, so maybe that's not entirely true.

Anyway, the point is that all football fans see injustice everywhere and we're no different, but I'd be happy to put the officiating of West Ham games in the last two season up against anyone's and see who has lost more points due to incompetence.

Which makes it all the more galling that Bilic chose today to go nuts. Because, there really wasn't that much wrong with the officiating. The Antonio foul was egregious, but that happened right in front of me and I didn't see it until I got home.

I felt for Bilic, as I left the ground feeling most decisions had gone against us, but in the end most were right. Feghouli had a goal disallowed in the first half whilst Craig Dawson lay prone in the box having been floored by his own keeper. I'm pretty sure the linesman flagged for a foul initially, but once Oliver confirmed it wasn't a foul they changed their mind and disallowed it for offside and hoped for the best. Replays proved them correct as Antonio was offside and interfered with Foster as he tried to save the shot. In the end, you have to say that was a fine decision.

All the while, Dawson lay on the ground and did what any other 6"2 centre half coached by Tony Pulis would do - he feigned injury.

Bilic also got himself in a lather about the throw that led to the corner from which West Brom equalised, but that looked wrong as well. He should have aimed his ire at Obiang who needlessly conceded the corner that West Brom were so desperately seeking and couldn't have scored without.

I feel sorry for Bilic, as by blowing his top so spectacularly will undo his previous 18 months of reasoned pragmatism after games. The truly sad thing is that if he just did it every week no one would pay any attention. In fact, they'd give him a cute nickname like "The Special One", "The Professor" or "Mark Hughes".

9. The Long Goodbye

It is worth noting that Adrian's contract is up this summer, although we have a two year extension option. I sincerely hope they exercise this, if for no other reason than they could get good money for him on the transfer market.

Better yet would be Adrian regaining his place. I have nothing particularly against Darren Randolph who has performed ably since taking over, but I'm not really seeing anything in his performance to explain why he is ahead of the Spaniard. Their league records this season are as follows:

Randolph - Played 14 Goals Against 23 Clean Sheets 3

Adrian - Played 11 Goals Against 20 Clean Sheets 3

This conveniently ignores a couple of Cup spankings for Adrian, but I'm not penalising him for the fact that we played Man Utd away while under hypnosis.

If this is the upper limit of Randolph's ability then the reality is that it is barely better than the form Adrian showed this season which got him dropped. Players deserve a chance and all that, but you also play your best players, and Adrian seems to me to be a visibly better keeper than Randolph.

10. Enemies Foreign And Domestic

Oh do fuck off