In Retro - The 50 Best West Ham Games of the Premier League Era (10 - 1)

10. Spurs (h) 1-0 : 2016/17 Premier League
(Lanzini (65))

Them again. 

In truth this was a situation not unlike the corresponding fixture the season before. As then, Spurs desperately needed to win in order to keep their title challenge alive, but for the downwardly mobile Hammers this was a game we had to win to secure our mathematical safety. 

Someone in the Metropolitan Police obviously likes a bit of an atmosphere and agreed to schedule this game on a Friday night, meaning that the general air around the ground was what you might have imagined at a pre Agincourt barbecue.

For a second consecutive season, Slaven Bilic hauled a terrific performance out of his players as their high intensity pressing caused Spurs an awful lot of trouble for a team who had built their success on such a tactic. While the visitors managed a couple of good efforts through Harry Kane and Heung Min-Son, the reality is that for a second season they simply faded a way at the point of their greatest need. 

If you look closely enough, you can see Jan Vertonghen's heart breaking

Some of that can be attributed to us, of course, as Bilic deployed an aged back three of Jose Fonte, Winston Reid and James Collins and they performed heroically. Elsewhere Cheikhou Kouyate was thundering about in midfield and even the much maligned Andre Ayew and Jonathan Calleri were outstanding up front. And for the possibly the only time in living memory there was an actual, audible atmosphere in the chemical waste dump that we call a ground. 

I refuse to accept that the London Stadium is a good place to watch football, but on this night, in these circumstances and against these visitors there was a hint of electricity in the air. Not the kind you get from the mains, but more the spark you get when you take off an acrylic jumper in the dark. I suppose that's a start. 

9. Arsenal (h) 2-1 : 1999/00 Premier League
(Di Canio (29, 72) - Suker (77))

It's hard to believe now, I realise, but there was a time in the Nineties when Arsenal were the most feared team in the land. Manchester United were their great rivals but they tended to play a brand of football that either submerged you or gave you a chance. Arsenal, by contrast, didn't do chances. They either played you off the pitch with scintillating football or they kicked you off the pitch with a fearsome ruthlessness. I don't think teams ever really believed they could beat Arsenal, and Harry Redknapp especially appeared to hold a sort of reverence for them which often seemed to transmit to his teams. 

On this day, we entered the Sunday afternoon fixture having not beaten them at home for thirteen years and not having won any of our previous eleven games against them. Most Hammers tended to arrive at Arsenal games knowing that the biggest mystery of the day was really how we would contrive to lose rather than if. 

This one started slightly differently, however, as the good early season form generated by our UEFA Cup run carried over into the match. Paolo Di Canio was soon tormenting the visitors with his unconventional strike partner Paulo Wanchope, and we looked a bit more up for it than previously. Di Canio opened the scoring on the half hour after a long mazy dribble in which he was seemingly tackled about five times and eventually ended up with him tapping in from six yards while David Seaman went for a stroll around Newham. 

His second was more memorable, as he sent Martin Keown on his own journey of discovery and left him stranded in the box to make it 2-0. Things all then went a little bit Upton Park as Davor Suker quickly pulled a goal back before mild mannered midfield philosopher Patrick Vieira upended Di Canio and got sent off. Not content with that, he returned to spit at Neil Ruddock and gave a pretty good impression of a man desperate to incite a riot. We clung on, somehow, as Arsenal kept knocking at the door, even as we lost Marc Vivien Foe to a second yellow card of his own. 

We would beat them only once more at Upton Park, when Marlon Harewood scored a last minute winner in 2006 and Alan Pardew promptly started a fight with Arsene Wenger. Halcyon days. 

8. Spurs (a) 3-2 : 2017/18 League Cup
(Ayew (55, 65) Ogbonna (70) - Sissoko (6), Alli (37))

Perhaps a League Cup 4th Round tie shouldn't be featuring quite so highly on this list, but to counter that argument I would ask how often you go to Wembley, are two down at half time and come back to win? 

We came into this game on the back of a truly awful 3-0 defeat at home to Brighton, in which we allowed Glenn Murray to score twice and as a result should probably have been relegated there and then. Slaven Bilic was under huge pressure having spent all his summer transfer budget on the players who could easily have been cast in The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel and speculation was rife that he was about to be sacked. 

Adrian auditions for A Hobbit's Tale

Those calls only got louder when we allowed alleged footballer Moussa Sissoke to run straight through our defence after just six minutes here to open the scoring. Spurs had a number of other chances before Delle Alli scored a second courtesy of a big deflection off Declan Rice, and at that point most of us in the away end were pondering at what point it was socially acceptable to leave. 

At half time, my old school friend and OLAS contributor Dave Terris produced a Galaxy bar and we tacitly agreed that when it got to four we'd probably start tunnelling our way out. 

But somewhere in the bowels of a half full Wembley, Bilic was casting some sort of magic spell. I don't think that it was much more meaningful than "Abracadabra, give it to Lanzini", but it worked a treat as the Argentine was suddenly everywhere and Spurs were all at sea. We pulled one back after fifty five minutes when an Edmilson Fernandes drive was only parried by Michel Vorm to Andre Ayew who made no mistake from eight inches out. Ten minutes later, Lanzini got in behind the Spurs defence and picked out the Ghanaian again with a beautiful flick and just like that we were level. I should add that the scenes in the away end when this one went in were pretty reminiscent of a rave I once went to in Majorca. 

The comeback was complete just five minutes later when Angelo Ogbonna headed in a Lanzini corner and just like that we had turned it around. Spurs chucked back a few tame counterpunches but we held on to complete a remarkable, thrilling, life affirming win. 

For Bilic, this was his last hurrah as we would next throw away a two goal lead at Crystal Palace and then attempt to play Liverpool without a defence and lose 4-1. He was sacked after that particular nightmare, but on this cold October evening at Wembley everything was just about perfect. 

7. Everton (a) 3-2 : 2015/16 Premier League
(Antonio (78), Sakho (81), Payet (90) - Lukaku (13) Lennon (56))

A recurring theme of the Slaven Bilic era was the team coming back from two goals down to earn points. On the face of it, that's not a bad habit to have although it's also probably true that a tendency to concede two goals all the time probably isn't the hallmark of a good team. But in 2015/16, no rules seemed to apply; Leicester could win the league, Spurs could have an actual title run and West Ham could win on Merseyside. 

We entered this game in 6th place but without a win against Everton in the Premier League in sixteen attempts. The reverse fixture had been highlighted by us going a goal ahead and Everton midfielder James McCarthy then kicking Dimitri Payet out of the game. That one foul probably ended up costing us a Champions League place as Payet would miss the next seven games, of which we would win only one.

But on a spring afternoon on Merseyside we - eventually - got some retribution. Before we got to that point, however, like with all epic tales things would have to get pretty bleak. Romelu Lukaku opened the scoring, as required by law, by rolling teenager Reece Oxford far too easily and slotting home after just thirteen minutes. Things then went a bit weird as Kevin Mirallas was sent off for a poor tackle on Aaron Cresswell. Instead of spurring us on, however, it seemed to inspire Everton who continued to be the better team and eventually got a neat second through Aaron Lennon. A dismal day was then compounded when they were granted an incorrect penalty. As Lukaku stepped up it seemed like our propensity to fall behind in games had finally caught us up. 

Adrian, however, had other ideas as he saved both the penalty and later  another breakaway effort from Lukaku. With just twelve minutes to go our right back - Michail Antonio, if you're still trying to solve the puzzle as to why we were so bad defensively - popped up to head a consolation. Rather enjoyably, Everton then collapsed like American democracy, and Diafra Sakho soon headed an equaliser. We piled forward, with Andy Carroll barrelling around like a possessed bowling ball, and with just seconds remaining Payet latched on to a Sakho flick to poke home a wonderful winner. A moment to savour in a season of them. We left Goodison in fifth place and would then watch our season dissolve in a flurry of poor refereeing decisions, bad luck and the stupidity of not buying an actual striker in January. Plus ca change. 

6. Spurs (a) 3-0 : 2013/14 Premier League
(Reid (66), Vaz Te (72), Morrison (79))

Another trip to White Hart Lane and a thoroughly enjoyable Sunday in the early season sun. Having won against Cardiff on opening day, we had gone winless while Spurs were unbeaten at home and had only conceded two goals all season. 

Big Sam Allardici, however, is not a man to worry about such niceties and decided to shake things up and employ the "False Nine" system popularised by Spain at the recent World Cup. This involved having Ravel Morrison and Mohamed Diame rotating in and out of the striking role, and leaving the notorious high defensive line of Andre Villas Boas without anybody to mark. 

What could have been

For an hour the system worked excellently, as our extra numbers in midfield crowded out the home team, and allowed us to break forward from time to time with purpose. We took the lead from a corner when Winston Reid headed goalwards, had the ball rebound back to him from Kevin Nolan and then poked home. Six minutes later, Ricardo Vaz Te broke on to a Mark Noble through ball, shot against Hugo Lloris, fell over and then scored as the ball bounced back and hit him mid fall. Lovely stuff all round as we rode our ricochets into a two goal lead. 

The general shittiness of our opening two goals was cancelled out, however, by the brilliance of our third. Nomadic wunderkind Ravel Morrison picked up a pass inside our half and dribbled through the Spurs defence - it contained Michael Dawson but it was still impressive - and then lifted it over Lloris to seal our victory. A fabulous goal to seal a fabulous win. 

Sadly, Allardyce was so pleased with his tactical innovation that he persisted with it for a further five winless games, until someone eventually told him that strikers were for life and not just for Christmas. We would beat Spurs twice more that season whilst losing 5-0 to Championship side Nottingham Forest in the FA Cup, and 9-0 on aggregate to Manchester City in the League Cup semi finals. Say what you like about Allardyce but he didn't do anything to change our reputation as a side you should never, ever include in a bet. 

5. Ipswich Town (h) 2-0 : 2003/04 Play Offs
(Etherington (50), Dailly (71))

If you know - you know. 

I don't think I'll forget this night as long as I live. 

Alan Pardew had taken over from Glenn Roeder with the club not so much in a state of flux as occupying the centre of a black hole with no laws of physics applying. The stars were mostly gone, and even those who had stayed such as David James and Jermain Defoe would leave by January. In their place was a transitional mix of the young and talented types like Michael Carrick, Matthew Etherington and Bobby Zamora alongside older heads such as Steve Lomas and Andy Melville - the slowest man I have ever seen play football. 

The side was a bit of a patchwork, with no recognised left back meaning that Hayden Mullins was needing to be deployed there by the end of the season. We looked for a while like we might struggle to make the play offs but ended up in fourth, which gave us a trip to Ipswich Town who had finished a point behind us. They won a nervy and underwhelming first league 1-0, leaving everything riding on the return fixture. 

But West Ham under the lights is a different kind of ask altogether. From the moment the first leg finished Pardew was stoking things up, telling Ipswich that they would be facing an altogether different challenge when they came to East London, and he wasn't wrong. Spurred on, the crowd had the old place shaking like it hadn't done for quite some time and when the players emerged there was a mild concern that the roof wasn't going to survive the aural assault. 

We started like a lightning bolt and Ipswich soon looked like they had channelled their inner Spurs as they froze in the face of the onslaught. Kelvin Davis made a number of outstanding stops in a one way first half, but there was a sense of inevitability about the opening goal. Carrick took a short corner to Etherington, everybody groaned, and he duly smashed it in the top corner to take the pin out of the grenade.

Twenty minutes later the oft vilified, but never shirking Christian Dailly got hit in the nuts at a corner, stood up long enough to poke in the second goal and then collapsed in agony. It was a peculiar moment as the players couldn't celebrate while the crowd were blissfully unaware and re-enacted the fall of the Berlin Wall. 

We held on, even as Ipswich hit the post late on, and a play off final was sealed. That ended dismally, but on this particular night, when the ground shook and the night was filled with song, West Ham was the only place to watch football. 

4. Metz (a) 3-1 : 1999/00 Intertoto Cup
(Sinclair (23), Lampard (43), Wanchope (78) - Jestrovic (68))

If you're a West Ham fan of a certain age then you'll know what I mean when I say that Metz is a word you hear whispered on the wind. Fans talk about it all the time, and it resides somewhere within the fabric of the club simply because of how great this particular night was. 

It's easy to mock the Intertoto Cup, and many do, but we finished in 5th place and should have gone straight in to the UEFA Cup but instead were made to play in this new, and curiously constructed, competition. So, in July we played FC Jokerit of Finland and SC Heerenveen of the Netherlands to qualify for this - bizarrely one of three finals taking place that night on August 24th 1999. The others were won by Montpelier and Juventus, but we went in to our game 1-0 down having disappointingly lost at home to a Louis Saha goal. 

I think part of the allure of this game is that the conditions, in a foreign country, in glorious sunshine, in a totally different atmosphere against players and clubs we'd never see before - all of that felt like it belonged to other clubs. Certainly we had seen it on TV but it had always seemed so out of reach. The very notion that you could go to watch West Ham in a competitive match in France in a place called the Stade Saint Symphorien seemed like the kind of thing that belonged to a bygone era. And thus thousands of West Ham fans made that trip and turned the night into quite an event. 

Visiting diplomats

We started well, even though we had only two available defenders, and actually had two goals ruled out before Trevor Sinclair cut in and fired in a great low left footed shot to give us the lead. The excellent Frank Lampard then freed Paolo Di Canio down the right hand flank a minute before half time, surged into the box and finished off an elongated one-two by volleying home the Italian's cross.

As the night drew in and the sun went down, the atmosphere cranked up further and when Metz scored an excellent goal of their own through Nenad Jestrovic it seemed like we would be in for a nervous last twenty minutes. That feeling was only exacerbated when there were clashes in the crowd, but thankfully Paulo Wanchope skipped past the keeper in typically inelegant style to score our third and seal the tie. 

As with so many things connected to West Ham, this was a missed opportunity. Rather than being the building block that we all hoped it would be, this game stands as a kind of high water mark - Di Canio in his pomp, Ferdinand and Lampard happy and outstanding, Cole and Carrick on their way and a selection of young, excellent professionals around them. It wouldn't last. It never does.

3. Manchester United (a) 1-0 : 2006/07 Premier League
(Tevez (45))

Has any game ever been so memorable while being quite so unmemorable? This was a match that was solely about the result, and everything else was just ballast. Going into the game we were in 17th, but with an inferior goal difference courtesy of a first half of the season where we played with a rush goalie. With our two main rivals - Wigan and Sheffield United - facing each other, we knew that a point would definitely keep us up, but a defeat could easily send us down. 

Not only that, we faced the daunting prospect of having to win at Old Trafford, where Manchester United had lost just once in yet another title winning season. In retrospect, it can't be denied that the hosts were focusing on their FA Cup final to be played the following week as they left Giggs, Ronaldo and Scholes on the bench. With that said, they were still fearsome and we relied on Robert Green to make a string of fine saves to keep us in the game. 

We also lost quietly underrated left back George McCartney early in the game, but didn't miss a beat as Lucas Neill continue to marshall our back line superbly. And then, and then....

With half time imminent, Carlos Tevez played a one-two with Bobby Zamora, watched the ball skew up into the air from a defensive challenge, and calmly slid the dropping ball past Edwin van der Sar on the half volley. It was a wonderful goal, not least because it also helped to ratchet up the tension at Brammall Lane, where Sheffield United were losing to Wigan. 

We held on, not without incident but also not without a sense of purpose and steel, and in the Manchester drizzle we celebrated a remarkable escape and a dismal season. Tevez would never play for us again and our Icelandic owners would soon go bankrupt, leading us on a journey that would end with David Sullivan and David Gold purchasing the club as a distressed asset a few years later. Whether you think Tevez should have been playing, or whether you believe Neil Warnock's relegation was really underserved, you can't deny that the miracle run-in of 2007 was an extraordinary sequence of performances for which Alan Curbishley probably deserves far greater credit. 

2. Spurs (h) 4-3 : 1996/97 Premier League
(Dicks (20, 72 p), Kitson (22), Hartson (38) - Sheringham (8), Anderton (29), Howells (53))

By the end of February 1997, West Ham were going down. We hadn't won in eight games and prior to the arrival of Spurs had lost five in a row, including a cup defeat at home to Wrexham that was so bad the video is probably used by the CIA in torture sessions. 

Harry Redknapp had begun to notice that his strike force of Iain Dowie and Mike Newell was a tad unthreatening, and in fact no striker had scored for us that year, forcing him to shell out £7m for Paul Kitson and John Hartson. 

Both would start this game, and score, on a night when it felt like the wind and rain was moving horizontally across the pitch. Things started poorly, however, when Teddy Sheringham opened the scoring with a smart header. We were indebted to talismanic skipper Julian Dicks for our recovery as he thumped in a header from a Michael Hughes corner after twenty minutes to equalise. Just two minutes later, a second Hughes corner got held up on the wind and Kitson ducked underneath it to nod home. 

The lead held for seven minutes before Darren Anderson lobbed Ludek Miklosko to equalise - a status quo which held for all of nine minutes before Hartson demolished Sol Campbell to crash home a Dicks free kick. We led at the end of a crazy first half, but David Howells would soon restore parity with the best goal of the night from outside the box. Amid the madness of this game I always think it's worth remembering that Howells played despite his father dying earlier that day. 

As misfortune would have it, it was cruelly to be Howells who then fouled Hartson to give Dicks the chance to put us back into the lead from the spot. To say that he smashed it home would be to greatly understate the violence of his penalty. The appropriate term would probably be whatever one uses to describe the action of a bazooka. 

We held on and stayed up, and that game remains indelibly inked in my mind. Those lights, that pitch, the rain, that performance. I doubt there have been many more entertaining games of football ever played in this country.  

1. Manchester United (h) 3-2 : 2015/16 Premier League
(Sakho (10), Antonio (78), Reid (80) - Martial (51, 72))

Is there such a thing as destiny? Whenever we're about to play a team who haven't won in a while we all seem to think so. And so, maybe that's what this was. I don't know but it was a game unlike any other. There is nothing quite like saying goodbye, after all. 

A confession - I didn't go to this game. I had no season ticket this year, but I did have a new phone, which proved terribly unhelpful when a mate messaged me on my old one to ask me if I wanted his spare ticket. He still sends me a screenshot of that from time to time, if he thinks my mental health seems too stable. 

I had made my peace with leaving, and had made my last trip on a frigid February afternoon to watch a tepid 1-0 win over Sunderland. But on this night I felt the pull. I almost went down to the ground just to stand outside, which was an urge that several thousand others chose not to ignore. This had the knock on effect of delaying the kick off as the Manchester United team bus couldn't get through the throng outside having seemingly asked my wife how long they would need to get there, and duly left half an hour after they were supposed to have arrived. 

When the game got going it was...perfect. A balmy night for shirt sleeves and raised hairs alike, and the lights beating down one final time. Diafra Sakho - a madman - opened the scoring after just ten minutes and to be honest, it felt like there was an inevitability to everything that followed. Of course we would dominate and miss lots of chances. Of course they would equalise just after halftime, and then accidentally score to take the lead with just twenty minutes of football left at our home. 

You beautiful bastard

From there, of course we wouldn't buckle and of course Michail Antonio - a consistent scorer of important goals - would head our equaliser. And of course, with ten minutes to play, Dimitri Payet would conjure one last assist and Winston Reid would write one final line on the bottom of the script. 

In some ways, I still feel emotional about that night and that season. Riven throughout this series of articles is a lament for what we gave up in leaving Upton Park. For all those dreadful home performances - and there were many, lest we romanticise it too greatly - there was also something buried under the surface that could be mined by the right players or managers. When the lights were on and the mood was with us, we could move mountains at that place. We could rise above the natural limitations of our station and become something better. The harsh truth is that the London Stadium has no such seam to mine, and indeed was supposed to be the thing that made us better. It has not. We must build something different so that when somebody writes this equivalent piece in fifty years time, when Brexit has started paying dividends, it can be filled with amazing nights from that stadium. Over to you Moyesy. 

Honourable Mentions:

Arsenal (a) 1-0 : 2006/07 Premier League

Wigan (h) 3-2 : 2009/10 Premier League

Manchester City (a) 2-1 : 2005/06 FA Cup

Chelsea (h) 1-0 : 2002/03 Premier League

Sunderland (a) 1-0 : 2000/01 FA Cup

Spurs (a) 2-1 : 2013/14 League Cup

Manchester United (h) 2-2 : 1996/97 Premier League

In Retro - The 50 Best West Ham Games of the Premier League Era (50 - 41)

In Retro - The 50 Best West Ham Games of the Premier League Era (40 - 31)

In Retro - The 50 Best West Ham Games of the Premier League Era (30 - 21)

In Retro - The 50 Best West Ham Games of the Premier League Era (20 - 11)

In Retro - The 50 Best West Ham Games of the Premier League Era (20 - 11)

20. Chelsea (a) 3-2 : 2002/03 Premier League
(Defoe (40), Di Canio (49, 84) - Hasselbaink (21 p), Zola (74))

In 2001, popular and populist manager Harry Redknapp was sacked by chairman Terry Brown and eventually replaced by lugubrious coach Glenn Roeder. Despite a drastically low set of expectations, Roeder steered us to a seventh place finish and in truth it looked like there were a lot of building blocks for the future. Youngsters Joe Cole, Michael Carrick and Jermain Defoe were emerging, Glen Johnson was on the way and England internationals Trevor Sinclair and David James were in place to complement the excellent strike pair of Paolo di Canio and Frederic Kanoute.  

The idea that we could get relegated in 2003 with that squad still seems absurd, but we somehow managed it, and an entire generation of outstanding youth players was wasted. However, one of the few bright spots in the season came in September when we travelled to high flying Chelsea, bottom of the league and still searching for our first win. 

Not pictured - Gary Breen, supreme

Things started poorly when Scott Minto conceded a ludicrously soft penalty and Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink scored his customary goal against us. Substitute Defoe snuffled an equaliser just before half time and then shortly after the interval Di Canio scored one of the best goals I've ever seen when he flicked up a loose ball with his right foot and smashed it home from thirty yards with his left. Even now, it perplexes me why that goal doesn't feature in more Premier League "Best of..." compilations. 

Minto carried on his tremendous day at the office by needlessly fouling Gianfranco Zola with a quarter of an hour to go and the Italian punished him with a glorious free kick. Di Canio, however, was not to be denied and with minutes to go he profited from some marvellously Mighty Ducks style Chelsea defending to pilfer a winning goal. This match was also notable for being the only time that Gary Breen would ever play well for us. What. A. Day. 

19. Liverpool (a) 3-0 : 2015/16 Premier League 

(Lanzini (3), Noble (29), Sakho (90))

When looking for reasons why Slaven Bilic remains so beloved by West Ham fans despite presiding over some truly abysmal football teams, I think you have to look at games like this. West Ham, incredibly, had not won at Anfield since 1962 before this game, which is the kind of losing record that you typically only see in wrestling where the matches are actually fucking fixed and one party isn't trying. 

But in 2015/16 both ourselves and Liverpool were different animals than we'd seen before or after. We had Dimitri Payet, while Brendan Rodgers was trying to mould a team while Simon Mignolet was in goal for him. Tough gig. 

We started brightly with Manuel Lanzini scoring after just three minutes on his full debut, and Mark Noble adding a second on the half hour after a wonderfully slapdash bit of defending from Dejan Lovren that was part falling over and part performative dance. Philippe Coutinho was then correctly sent off for a stupid lunge on Payet, which referee Kevin Friend decided to even up by sending off Noble for a perfectly fair tackle later on. It seems you still have to knock the big boys out to get a draw in the Premier League.

Diafra Sakho then broke away to score a last minute third and seal a 3-0 win at Anfield, which is the kind of sentence that thousands of West Ham fans thought they would never see in print. 

18. Spurs (a) 4-1 : 1993/94 Premier League

(Jones (37), Morley (60 p, 73), Marsh (80) - Sheringham (66 p))

Another day, another highly enjoyable visit to White Hart Lane. I think this Easter Monday victory lives long in the memory as it allowed thousands of teenage Hammers like me to strut around the various schools and workplaces of Essex and East London for quite a while, such was the comprehensive nature of our win. 

Things started cagily, with West Ham probably needing a win to be sure of avoiding relegation in our first Premier League season, and Spurs dangerously close to being pulled into the dogfight themselves. Peter Butler was injured early on and replaced by Steve Jones, which proved to be the turning point as he quickly ran on to an Ian Bishop through ball and smashed home his most famous goal for us. 

On the hour mark, Trevor Morley conned Kevin Scott into fouling him in the area and picked himself up to give us a two goal lead from the spot. Feeling the game needed an injection of life, Morley then went up the other end and gave away a penalty of his own to allow Teddy Sheringham to pull one back for the home team.  

I'm pretty sure this is Mike Marsh

However, with Bishop having a masterful game in the middle we never really looked like losing and Morley soon added a second after some more Ardilesian defending from Gary Mabbutt. Mike Marsh, another underrated signing, would add a late fourth as Spurs simply abandoned the notion of defending and we coasted to a thumping victory that left Spurs in 15th place and just three points above the relegation zone. Sadly, they would survive but it was enjoyably close for a while there. 

17. Man Utd (a) 1-0 : 2000/01 FA Cup

Back in 2001 the footballing world was a vastly different place. A year earlier Manchester United had withdrawn from the FA Cup in order to play in the FIFA World Club Championship and been pilloried for the decision. Unpopular anyway, this was seen as the ultimate snook cocking and a bridge too far for the English media. In typically modest fashion, United continued to refer to themselves as the holders of the trophy having won it in 1999 and their reputation was further enhanced when it emerged that they had already booked their favourite hotel in Wales for May, in anticipation of making the final again in Cardiff. 

When we were drawn against them in the Fourth Round it was a genuinely huge game, shifted to the Sunday to be covered by ITV and West Ham were given 9,000 tickets for the match. Alex Ferguson picked his strongest side, which was borderline unbeatable at the time, while we sweated over injuries to Shaka Hislop and Frederic Kanoute. The Mali striker was crucial as without him we tended to all but disappear in away games. 

Paolo, relaxing

Still, the omens weren't all that great with our back five containing the octogenarian pairing of Stuart Pearce and Nigel Winterburn, and Hislop patently unable to kick a ball. With United hammering at us early on, it never really felt like we were going to win and indeed most fans were having post traumatic flashbacks to our 7-1 defeat there a year before. 

However, the key to the victory was our brilliant homegrown midfield of Frank Lampard, Joe Cole and Michael Carrick. As Jacob Steinberg observed in The Guardian when he described this as his favourite West Ham game, the great sadness was that this performance heralded an end and not a beginning. The young trio controlled the game and gave us the platform to grow into the game and eventually steal a late winner. 

The goal itself is pretty famous, as Kanoute freed Paolo di Canio who ran into the box, ignored Fabien Barthez trying to tell him he was offside and slotted home the winner. We would be drawn away at Sunderland next, who were actually second in the league at the time, and beat them too before losing a borderline Shakespearean home quarter final to Spurs. 

I actually didn't even bother to apply for a ticket to this game, such was my pessimism, and I got what I deserved as I had to watch on TV with the rest of the world. When we were drawn at Old Trafford again a couple of years later I made sure I didn't miss out. 

We lost 6-0. 

Sometimes God is a little too on the nose, you know. Still, Let's All Do The Barthez.

16. Spurs (a) 1-0 : 2018/19 Premier League

(Antonio (67))

It's not often that football games live all that long in the memory. They feel important and substantial and then another one arrives five days later and suddenly that's the only game that matters. The value we ascribe to certain fixtures is rarely, if ever matched by their real life impact. It's therefore sometimes the case that you need a bit of history alongside the actual game to make it truly stick in the mind. 

So, what sets this 1-0 victory at White Hart Lane apart from the equivalent Dani game in 1996? Well, for a start this game was played in a totally different stadium. Having "lost" their attempt to win the Olympic Stadium and then benefitting from a weirdly fortuitous set of fires on land where they wanted to build, Spurs then spent $1 billion on building their new, incredible home. It might feature a cheese room, and ludicrous, unnecessary extras but it is undeniably an astonishing place to watch football, and will stand as an eternal monument to the half arsed job that was done on our new place. 

But if the stadia aren't comparable then all that remained was for us to go and make the pitch our own. And with Spurs unbeaten in their new home with no goals conceded, that looked a pretty formidable ask for Manuel Pellegrini's new look West Ham, who had picked up just one point from their previous eight away games and were struggling to cope with their managers indecipherable prognostications about having a "big club mentality". 

However, with Spurs focusing half an eye on their Champions League semi final with Ajax, it's also true that this was a good time to be playing them even if they did play their best available team. The game started in a characteristically frenetic style and Spurs edged a first half in which our influential forward Marko Arnautovic touched the ball just seven times. He would make up for this in the second period however, alongside Mark Noble who simply took the game over and began to pull the strings in the same way as Bishop in 1994. 

Eventually, on 67 minutes, Arnautovic got free on the right, picked out Michail Antonio and the striker smashed home the first opposition goal at the new White Hart Lane, and then celebrated by pretending to hump a donkey on a space hopper. As you do. 

Things got a bit Twilight Zone thereafter when the two best chances in the rest of the game fell to our marauding centre back Issa Diop and an enthusiastic amateur footballer by the name of Vincent Janssen who won a competition to play up front for Spurs for the final twenty minutes. 

Still, we held on and, as with The Emirates, planted an eternal flag as the deserved first winners at the new North London stadium. We were all also introduced to those to two Spurs lads who film themselves watching matches and, well, more from them later. 

15. Wigan (a) 3-0 : 2006/07 Premier League

(Boa Morte (30), Benayoun (57), Harewood (82))

I don't know if you guys recall this, but there was a stage in the 2006/07 season when it seemed like we might go down. In fact, after a Wes Craven directed last minute defeat to Spurs in March we were bottom of the league, 11 points from safety, without an away win all season and facing a run-in that involved trips to Arsenal and Manchester United. So, in summary, we were fucked. 

To add to the mess, controversial summer signing Carlos Tevez had still not scored all season and his pal Javier Mascherano was apparently stuffing his face with pizza in a Docklands flat having failed to displace Hayden Mullins from our midfield. Still, by the time we got to Wigan, things were slightly brighter after unlikely wins over Blackburn Rovers, Everton and Arsenal, sandwiched around a truly awful defeat at relegation rivals Sheffield United. 

At one point it looked as though Tevez might not play in this game as the club had to mount the first of several legal defences regarding the validity of his registration. They emerged triumphant - in a fashion - with a record £5.5m fine, and the Argentine played and starred in this remarkable win. 

Things began with a huge army of Hammers heading north on coaches paid for by the players, at the arrangement of Lucas Neill and Nigel Reo-Coker. With around 7,000 fans packed in behind the goal there was a tangible fission of excitement on the air. A win would pull us level with Wigan and put increasing pressure on the likes of the faltering Sheffield United and Fulham. 

Boa Morte scores. Horsemen of the Apocalypse on their way

After an opening half an hour where we were well on top, Neill launched a through ball for Luis Boa Morte to run on to. Wigan keeper John Filan weighed up all possible options and chose the worst one available by running directly at Boa Morte, who lobbed him for his first goal in claret and blue. He would literally have been better off doing The Barthez,

Bobby Zamora could have made it two before half time, but we would soon seal the win with a fabulous breakaway goal where Tevez, Zamora and George McCartney would combine to set up Yossi Benayoun. Substitute Marlon Harewood added a late third, and The Great Escape was well and truly on. 

In the end, Sheffield United would end up being relegated, which I'm sure everyone would agree was a shame. Oddly, the long trip home was punctuated by seeing demoralised Charlton Athletic fans who had travelled to watch their team play at Blackburn Rovers as part of Alan Pardew's inspired "Operation Ewood" escape plan. They lost 4-1. 

Our karmic retribution would come in the summer when Henry Winter, Neil Warnock and a confused judge would request we pay £25m to Sheffield United over the Tevez affair. Still, we'll always have that goal from Luis Boa Morte. 

14. Arsenal (a) 2-0 : 2015/16 Premier League

(Kouyate (43), Zarate (57))

Back to 2015/16 and back to those improbable away results conjured up by Slaven Bilic. On the opening day we made the short trip to The Emirates where it was reasonable to assume that we were going to get our usual hiding at the hands of Arsene Wenger's men, especially as we had only just returned from being dumped out of Europe at the hands of Romanian powerhouse Astra Giurgiu, or Astra Fucking Goo Goo to give them their full title. While it's true that the Arsenal of 2015 wasn't the Arsenal of 2005 it is also true that they weren't the shower that we've seen parading around the Premier League recently, so we were heavy underdogs.

The game was an entertaining affair, played out in bright sunshine and with a pleasing flow. New signing Angelo Ogbonna was rock solid at the back, while 16 year old Reece Oxford made Mesut Ozil disappear long before it became as fashionable as it is now. But the real star was new boy Dimitri Payet, who played in a nominal left wing role and was simply majestic. He crossed just before half time for Cheikhou Kouyate to give us the lead, while Petr Cech conducted an experiment in finding out exactly how badly a goalkeeper could misjudge a dive. 

The Czech's misery continued later when Mauro Karate fired past him from twenty yards and we hung on to seal a comfortable win. Notably Matt Jarvis and Kevin Nolan appeared as late substitutes, signifying a kind of handover from the old Allardyce era to what seemed like it might be a sun drenched modern adventure under Bilic. We lost 4-3 to Bournemouth a week later. Never change, lads. 

13. Spurs (a) 3-3 : 2020/21 Premier League

(Son (1), Kane (8, 16) - Balbuena (82), Sanchez (OG 85), Lanzini (90)) 

Oh baby. Lanziniiiiiiiiiiii!

You shouldn't really have a draw this high in a list of your greatest games, but then again you shouldn't draw a game where you are three goals down with eight minutes to play. For all those hundreds of games we watch and attend, for all those insipid defeats and tedious draws that we immediately consign to the wastepaper bin of history, it only takes one game like this to make you remember precisely why you first fell in love with the game. Football, bloody hell. 

To the neutral this must have been a bizarre match to watch. Spurs opened the scoring within a minute when we decided not to bother tackling Heung Min-Son, and Harry Kane soon added another couple. All three goals were brilliantly conceived and executed and at that point for West Ham fans it was simply a case of how many more they would score, and how much longer we would be able to keep watching. 

But Jose Mourinho isn't a coach to ever let loose the handbrake and David Moyes has imbued his team with a steel that hasn't been seen in a West Ham team for quite some time. Even at 3-0 we were still playing alright, with the obvious caveat that the home team had mostly gone into a mode of containment and were content to wait for chances to hit us on the break. As it was, Kane was denied a perfect hat trick by the post, and then everything went...nuts.

Manuel Lanzini. I love you

First, Fabien Balbuena made up for some questionable defending on the Son goal to head a consolation, and then Andriy Yarmolenko and Vladimir Coufal combined to force Davinson Sanchez to head a bit more consolation into his own net, and suddenly we had five minutes of hope left. The pivotal moment arrived when keen golfer and amateur footballer Gareth Bale went through and ruined his coming home party by shooting wide with the goal at his mercy. Reprieved, we went up the other end and with four minutes of added time already in the book Manuel Lanzini smashed home a thirty yarder off the underside of the bar, Moyes did a little jig on the touchline, we all felt extremely consoled and Mourinho took it all with the customary good grace for which he is famous. Oh, to have been in the away end when that went in. 

Better still, whenever I think of this game I am reminded of this - the best, and most dramatically executed headphone push of all time. 

INJECT IT INTO MY VEINS 💉💉💉 pic.twitter.com/HAVVqS2zeZ

— Chris Scull (@cjscull) October 18, 2020

No. No. No. No. NO. NO!

12. Arsenal (a) 3-2 : 2005/06 Premier League

(Reo-Coker (25), Zamora (32), Etherington (80) - Henry (45), Pires (89))

Another entry into the history books and arguably the most unlikely victory on this list. In 2006, Arsenal were in the middle of Arsene Wenger's reign and as strong as ever. Filled with world class superstars, they were especially formidable at Highbury in their final season there before moving to The Emirates. They would lose just two home league games all season and this, famously, was one. 

We weren't in great shape going in to this game as we had no right back, with Tomas Repka having headed  back to the Czech Republic a couple of weeks previously, and were thus forced to deploy the extremely left footed Clive Clarke there. Things began predictably as Arsenal swarmed all over us, and Robin van Persie slammed a strike against the woodwork, but having battled through the initial flurry we broke away and took the lead as Sol Campbell channelled his inner Gary Breen and Nigel Reo-Coker snatched an opener. Seven minutes later Bobby Zamora slapped Campbell around like a piñata and curled home a beautiful second and all of a sudden it was one of those nights. 

Arsenal, however, remained Arsenal and Thierry Henry snatched one back on the stroke of half time to keep us all fidgeting. On another day the immense pressure applied to us in the second half would have seen a comfortable Arsenal win but between a heroic defensive performance, Shaka Hislop's heroics and some good old fashioned luck we kept them at bay. With just ten minutes left, Reo-Coker won the ball back high up the pitch and set up Matthew Etherington whose shot deflected twice on its way in. Sometimes it's just meant to be. 

Robert Pires did score in the 89th minute because why not, but we held on for a famous win and became the last away team to win at Highbury. Deliciously, we would then become the first team to win at The Emirates where Zamora bagged us a 1-0 win the following season as part of The Great Escape in another game that narrowly failed to make this list. 

11. Bradford (h) 5-4 : 1999/00 Premier League

(Sinclair (35), Moncur (43), Di Canio (65 p), J Cole (70), Lampard (83) - Windass (30), Beagrie (44 p), Lawrence (47, 51)

I know what you're thinking - just another typical 1-0 down, 2-1 up, 4-2 down, 5-4 victory. But this might be the definitive game of the Harry Redknapp era as it showcased almost everything good and bad about that time. We began the game in 10th position with the sense of yet another lost season hanging over the ground. Our main focus had been on the League Cup where we made a run to the quarter finals and actually beat Aston Villa in a thrilling, pulsating game that ended up being settled on penalties. 

In the purest West Ham fashion imaginable we then ended up having to replay that match after it emerged that substitute Manny Omoyimni, who didn't actually touch the ball while on the pitch, had already played in the competition and was cup tied. Rather than chuck us out of the competition as they probably should have done, the league let us replay the game knowing full well that would be a more painful process, and they were right as we lost 3-1 and Paolo di Canio missed a fateful penalty. 

By the time Shaka Hislop broke his leg two minutes into this game it seemed like more of the same. On came the much hyped young reserve goalkeeper Stephen Bywater, who looked like he was borrowing his big brothers kit, and played like he was wearing his mums oven gloves. 

Incredibly the game was still goalless on the half hour mark when Dean Windass headed in a corner with Bywater rooted to his line. Trevor Sinclair quickly equalised before John Moncur got in on the act with a screamer of a goal to give us the lead and then immediately conceded a soft penalty that Peter Beagrie put away. 

The key observation from those of us in the ground at this point was that in order to win the game it seemed pretty imperative that everybody did their best to ensure Bywater wasn't required to touch the ball for the rest of the match as he appeared never to have seen one before. Sadly this ploy failed as Jamie Lawrence took advantage of two further howlers to give the visitors a (sort of) shock 4-2 lead. 

While all this was going on Di Canio was engaged in a seemingly endless battle with referee Neale Barry as he was denied penalties on at least two occasions where the foul was certainly worse than Moncur's in the first half. After the second of this he ran across to the bench and demanded to be taken off, sitting down on the turf and generally turning in the kind of performance that would get you booed offstage in the West End for being too hammy. Instead of treating this as a shocking lack of professionalism everybody just shrugged and said "That's Paolo" and sang his name. {Insert eye roll gif}

Shortly after, Paul Kitson was fouled and the penalty was finally given. Nominated penalty taker Frank Lampard picked up the ball only to find Di Canio trying to wrestle it off him. Being a well run and thoroughly professional outfit everybody told Di Canio to piss off and reminded him that he'd missed his last penalty and wait, oh no, we let him take it because we're about as professional as your average Sunday League team. 

Anyway, he scored and everyone sang his name so that was great. {Insert eye roll gif}. A few minutes later Trevor Sinclair set up Joe Cole for the equaliser, and with Bradford quite rightly still reasoning that if they could just get a shot on target they'd win, everybody stopped defending and it was all tremendous fun. 

With seven minutes to go, Lampard got some sense of redemption when he picked up a Di Canio pass and smashed home a left footed winner from the edge of the box. What a springboard for the rest of the season, I hear you say. Not really, we lost 4-0 at home to Everton the next week. 

In Retro - The 50 Best West Ham Games of the Premier League Era (50 - 41)

In Retro - The 50 Best West Ham Games of the Premier League Era (40 - 31)

In Retro - The 50 Best West Ham Games of the Premier League Era (30 - 21)

In Retro - The 50 Best West Ham Games of the Premier League Era (10 - 1)

Arsenal 4 - 1 West Ham (And Other Ramblings)

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

- Nirvana, "Heart Shaped Box"

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

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

And then Declan Rice ducked. 

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

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

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

ARTHUR MASUAKU

(jumping inexplicably to one side)

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

JOE HART

Yeah, that geezer killed himself, Arthur.

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

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

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

***

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

How does it feel? So good to have equalised"

- The Stone Roses, "Waterfall"

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

Love the man, bemused by the hair

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

Well, that wasn't happening here. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

And then Declan Rice ducked.

***

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

Then I guess I'll just begin again"

- Arcade Fire, "Ready To Start"

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

They've spent how much on Joe Hart?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

***

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

Gone are the future, way out in space"

- Blur, "Out of Time"

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

MAY 2018

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

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

JUNE 2018

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

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

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

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

JULY 2018

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

AUGUST 2018

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

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

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

SEPTEMBER 2018

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

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

OCTOBER 2018

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

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

NOVEMBER 2018

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

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

DECEMBER 2018

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

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

JANUARY 2019

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

The Mike Ashley Stand

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

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

FEBRUARY 2019

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

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

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

MARCH 2019

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

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

APRIL 2019

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

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

Meanwhile, West Ham Ladies have gone the season unbeaten. 

MAY 2019

We finish 15th.

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

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

Arsenal 1 - 0 West Ham (And Other Ramblings)

"I'm wasting all my time

I push it all away"

- Day Wave, "Wasting Time"

Context, context, context. Breathe in, breathe out, stare longingly at that semi final draw and try and put all of this into context. We have a lot of injuries. Arsenal have enough players to have two separate teams. Arsene Wenger's dad is refereeing. All those eighteen year olds. It was cold. 

But even with all of that being true, this still feels like a hollow defeat. To borrow from cricketing parlance - we died wondering. And so, on the way home last night, I found myself pondering whether this had been one of the most pointless endeavours in human history. Ninety minutes played with just a single shot at goal from us, and only one shot on target from both sides in the entire game, which Joe Hart most certainly did not save. What a colossal waste of time. 

Watching such impressive futility I couldn't help but think of the Roman Emperor, Caligula, who was apparently so furious with the sea that he ordered his soldiers to take their spears and stab the water, and then commanded them to collect sea shells as tokens of victory. In his defence, I have often felt like this about my new Sky Q box.

Sadly, this story is unlikely to be true and is widely regarded to be a concoction of Roman historians, but as I watched Aaron Cresswell battle gamely here as a very makeshift right wing back, I couldn't help but think that if we gave him some Speedo's, a beachtowel and a speargun he couldn't actually do any worse than he was doing. 

"I wonder if there are any central midfielders in here?" says David Moyes

***

"Oh is this the way they say the future's meant to feel?

Or just twenty thousand people standing in a field?"

- Pulp, "Sorted Out for E's and Whizz"

So what did this mean exactly? What was the point of that stirring, life affirming, renewing-our-vows-of-fidelity comeback at Wembley if we were going to surrender so meekly here? After all, this was a quarter final of a major trophy and it's a pretty messed up set of priorities when we're exchanging all of that glorious possibility for a shot at finishing 12th in the league. But it's really a bit more nuanced than all that.

Of course, we took seven thousand fans last night, and even at a tenner a ticket we were being fleeced, given the performance, but before tearing into Moyes and the players too quickly, I will ask a broader question of those fans who are rightly angry at such an insipid display. For me, the issue here is not one of whether we should have been more attacking, but more one of whether we actually could have been more attacking? Because, while I agree wholeheartedly with those who say that we should never spurn any opportunity to win a trophy, I think it's also reasonable to ask exactly what people would have done differently. Simply saying "have a go" or "show a bit of passion" isn't sufficient because those are meaningless phrases. The question here is...how?

The problem for Moyes essentially boiled down to the fact that he had no midfield available to him. He lost Edimilson Fernandes, Cheikhou Kouyate and Mark Noble to the West Ham annual Christmas injury bug, and Manuel Lanzini to a suspension after he was found guilty of diving whilst playing for a team with a turnover of less than £150m. Similarly absent were Josh Cullen and Reece Oxford who are on gap years somewhere getting their hair braided on the Inca trail, and Michail Antonio was declared unavailable by our medical team after it was confirmed that this game would last longer than an hour. 

So before he even began Moyes was shuffling deckchairs on the Titanic, and his answer was to hand starts to a pair of eighteen year old kids in Declan Rice and Domingos Quina. Alongside them was Obiang and they sat in front of a back five where Cresswell was pushed into service as a right wing back because Sam Byram has hamstrings made of blancmange and Pablo Zabaleta has bingo at Help the Aged on a Tuesday. To say we were under strength doesn't quite cover it. I didn't see a lack of effort on the pitch, but more a startling lack of ability. 

Declan, you go here, Aaron, you go here...

As such, we battled manfully enough, but with no creativity in the middle we kept running into problems once we got past the halfway line. Our sole opportunities came when Arthur Masuaku was on the ball and was able to run with it. Beyond that, we were reduced to aimless punts in the direction of Chicharito, and generally hoping that we might get a corner and smuggle one in. 

For his part, I didn't think that the Mexican did enough to hold the ball up, and instead spent too long trying to run off the shoulder of the last defender. That's not proper forward play, and unless you have some pretty accurate long range passers in key positions, is destined to fail - and we had James Collins and Declan Rice. 

Ironically, the one time Chicharito did get in behind, he latched on to an Obiang through ball and was immediately bundled over by one of Chambers or Holding (I couldn't tell them apart). It was a certain foul, and possibly a discussion over a red card. Instead, referee Kevin Friend just ignored it and waved play on. Ho, hum, get the tin foil hats out again lads. 

***

"There's the hum, young man where you from? Brooklyn number one

Native son, speaking in the native tongue

I got my eyes on tomorrow"

- Mos Def, "Hip Hop"

On a night of vanishingly few positives, and a literally vanishing Andre Ayew, I took some comfort from the performance of Domingos Quina. He started uncertainly, which is fair enough when you're up against players of the experience of Coquelin and Elneny, but I felt he grew into the game and showed some nice touches. He is diminutive in stature and clearly needs a bit more game time but I thought he showed enough to warrant further looks. 

By contrast, I felt the game mostly passed Rice by, which is also fine because he's a centre back being asked to play in midfield and is also just eighteen. I can see why he gets in ahead of Quina, because he is versatile and more physically ready, but ninety minutes of passing the ball four yards sideways to Obiang didn't convince me that he has a future in midfield. To be honest, I'd rather he went on loan somewhere in the Championship for a month and got kicked around a bit and made his mistakes there instead of for us. I'll also note that I don't want him to have a season long kick-the-issue-up-the-road loan, like Reece Burke is having. 

I must also confess that, particularly in this venue, it caused me to once more ponder the merit of sending Reece Oxford elsewhere. I suppose it's always true that on nights like this, players who aren't in the team can certainly improve a great deal. 

With those two youngsters alongside him, Obiang was frequently overrun and so Ayew was often seen dropping back, and as a result we really struggled to get forward at all. it also highlighted that none of Ogbonna, Reid or Collins can distribute the ball, and really hammered home the benefot of having Fonte or Cresswell in there, simply so that the ball can be passed forward with an entire bloody rosary of Hail Mary's to accompany it. As you can see from this 11Tegen11 shot map, we managed a solitary effort at goal - a Cresswell free kick - and apart from that were reduced to cheering the half time penalties going in past the Gunnersaurus.

I mean, honestly, that's not even a shot map - it's a Subbuteo pitch with some gravy spilled on it. The goal was a cavalcade of shitness as Hart stayed rooted to his line, while our centre backs bumped into each other like they were blindfolded and drunk and playing party games, and Danny Welbeck popped up to shin the ball in after controlling it on his stomach. As a metaphor for the game itself, it was a little too on the nose if anything, and even the guys waving those annoying flags behind the goals did so a bit sheepishly. 

And that was it. A League cup quarter final that circled the drain and disappeared without even the hint of an intervention. Not even the late, desperate decision to fling on Carroll and Sakho paid off as the latter was sulking and the former spent the entire time giving away fouls or being fouled. Sadly, the referee was adopting the old boxing adage of giving the edge to the team on the front foot, and thus ignored all of that. He also failed to do anything at all about Arsenal's timewasting and injury feigning in the last ten minutes - the only world class thing anybody did on the pitch all night. None of it made any difference of course, as we were so bad, but on a night when there was no beer on sale, and no spark on the pitch, it all just added to the irritation. 

***

"Just wait 'til tomorrow

I guess that's what they all say, before they fell apart"

- New Order, "Regret"

But let's deal with something now, namely that this was a big game, and we never showed up. Context is important, and we can't ignore that we're in no position to sacrifice league points in pursuit of anything, but what this also signified for me was two things; firstly, that our squad is almost criminally weak, and that the death of the league cup as a credible competition is almost upon us. 

The timing doesn't help. We are about to enter a period when our season will be determined, and we'll be playing five league games in fifteen days. We will have to play those fixtures without any help from January additions, because the game will all be over before they get here. So Moyes had to pick his poison and I can't argue with how he chose. 

By contrast, a team like Arsenal actually need these games because it allows them to give playing time to fringe players. Between the league cup and the Europa League it's actually eminently possible for Wenger to give these guys a dozen games before Christmas, which is a nice way to keep your players happy. As such, this competition has become a godsend for those with bloated squads (the big clubs), and a nightmare for anyone trying to preserve ageing legs going into the woodchipper that is Christmas (everyone else). 

What this has done then, is reinforce the point in the minds of chairmen and managers that the Premier League TV money of £80m is a far greater reward for a season's work than a cup victory. And while fans might disagree with that on a cellular level, we all also know that there is some truth in that. I hear plenty of fans arguing that they would take a Cup victory and relegation, but I have to assume that those people have not heard of Wigan. Sadly, even though I hate myself for typing it, it's not as straightforwardly binary as making that kind of choice. Fans forget that when you make a semi final now it's a two legged affair in January, when your knackered, depleted squad might very well lose 9-0 on aggregate to Manchester City, so even in that theoretical scenario it's not guaranteed that winning here would get us a trophy. 

But what's also maddening about this, and the piece I sympathise with enormously, is that this is one of only two things we can win. As a mid table club, we are totally reliant upon cup competitions for actual silverware, and therefore to pack up and give up on half of our chances doesn't sit well. In fairness, I don't think it sat well with Moyes either, and as I've said above, I saw his stance as being one of necessity rather than ideology. But the fact is, West Ham are precisely the kind of club for whom the League Cup should be an aspiration. We should be too good to go down and too inconsistent to dream of much else, so this should be a target that we go after with all the zealotry of a Republican congressman cutting children's healthcare in an attempt to reduce his own taxes. But that's just not possible with this squad. 

And even though I gave David Sullivan some credit for his hiring of Moyes at the weekend, I sincerely hope he spent this ninety minutes with his cheeks burning and his eyes on the ground. Look at the state of that midfield, David, and tell me you're proud of your summer's work. The folly and hubris of those purchases was laid bare as we ended this game with Ayew and Arnautovic in a three man midfield, and Rice as a wing back and even then our best hope of scoring was still our left back. 

I thought it was telling that at the weekend, Bournemouth manager Eddie Howe rotated his entire midfield for their game at home to Liverpool. Not that it did them any good, but the point remains. Other teams have depth where we have none, and it's going to be an incredibly long winter if that's not addressed, no matter how well organised our back four has suddenly become.

***

"But my mother always said you can forgive and forget, and expect that most promises won't be kept

I guess I gave credit where it wasn't deserved

Some brothers must have preferred not to keep their word"

- Jurassic 5, "Great Expectations"

Another day, another falling out with Diafra Sakho. I understand why he, and other fans, might be frustrated with his lack of playing time, but he's seemingly such a disruptive influence that I can understand why Moyes isn't prioritising his happiness over that of people like Ayew or Hernandez, who aren't openly campaigning to leave the club at least. 

So, with the Senegalese apparently getting £50,000 every time he starts a league game, he has started...zero league games this season. All very Entertainment 720, for those of you who know your Parks and Recreation, and seemingly a sure fire way to piss off a player who you need. 

Fifty grand to start!

It's not that I think we owe anything much to Sakho, given his propensity for disappearing when the going gets tough, but I just don't understand why he would be given this incentive and then actively prohibited from reaching it. He has been ignored all season, firstly in deference to Carroll and lately in favour of two midfielders turned forwards. I can see why he might be a bit pissed off, and think that was a deliberate attempt to avoid paying him his due. 

In addition, the sad reality is that he is the only one of our actual forwards with the capabilities to do what Moyes clearly wants from his front men - namely, to run channels, hold the ball up and get about the pitch with more mobility than a trebuchet. But from where Moyes sits, I can certainly understand how little desire there would be to accommodate the wishes of a player who is openly determined to leave. 

What a way to do business. 

Up the other end Joe Hart had another one of those evenings where he didn't do anything wrong but he didn't do anything right, and he won't be back between the sticks on Saturday. There was a strange, slightly down moment when some fans started singing Adrian's name after Hart came charging off his line and was booked for - as far as I could tell - not touching Welbeck. I get that fans feel Adrian has been hard done by, but when that manifests itself in actively trying to undermine the confidence of the guy on the pitch then that's a bridge too far for me. I accept that this was a frustrating night, a Fast and Furious movie of a night, a One Direction members solo album of a night and a general waste of time. But we must be better than that. 

After all, slagging off players generally has one outcome - it makes other players dislike the fans and the club. What do we think that Hart's mates in the dressing room think when they hear that? What about prospective signings, who are already wondering about joining a club with a near constant media circus surrounding us, a rehabilitating manager and an owner with a tendency to comment on them in the press? It's no wonder that Sullivan has to work harder than Antoine Griezmann's PR company just to get anybody through the door for a chat. 

Come on folks - we're better than that. When I wrote my retro pieces about Ian Bishop, Trevor Sinclair and Jack Collison, the unifying feature was how all of them felt a connection with the wider West Ham fanbase that helped them in moments of darkness. I'm sure that there are plenty of other players who would state that they had the opposite experience, but the point does still hold, I think. We can make a difference, and we should try and make the difference a positive one. Otherwise, we're just wasting our time. We might as well stab the sea.