West Ham 0 - 3 Burnley (And Other Ramblings)

"I long to feel, some beauty in my heart 

As I go searching, right to the start"

- Doves, "Kingdom of Rust"

I often wonder about these articles. What value do they serve, really, beyond allowing me to engage in something I like to do? They have become unrelentingly grim, with gloom painted over them like miserable graffiti and the gallows humour that I promised myself I would always try to thread through them is as long gone as Dimitri Payet.

I have no idea if Karren Brady is aware of The H List, but if she is I strongly suspect that she thinks it's just someone pissing into the tent, and I suppose from her perspective that might be true. Which led me to thinking about what I would do now if I were her. "Resign" is certainly an option there, but I have worked long enough in the City of London to know that people don't generally leave million pound a year jobs for silly little reasons like not being good at them.

Another day, another disaster

Which got me to thinking about my own career and what I would bring to West Ham as a Director. "Not much" is the answer there, but once upon a time I did have a role whereby I helped manage a team of a couple of hundred people. It was as challenging as you might expect, with my responsibility specifically covering personnel issues. I suspect that this was primarily to keep me away from doing any technical work, but in that role I learned a lot about people. And specifically I learned one very valuable life lesson; namely that you don't get to tell others how they feel. 

I lost count of the amount of times I heard junior staff tell their superiors something along the lines of "You make me feel undervalued when you only ever focus on my failings" and then hear a reply that began with the phrase "No, that's not true". See how that goes? You're wrong, you don't feel like that, have another go. 

And I have returned to this again and again this weekend. On some very deep, subterreanean level I do actually feel sympathy for Brady and the Board - they are trying to make a group of people happy who have a completely disparate set of desires. As my fellow Hammers blogger Alex V astutely pointed out, how on earth do you placate a fanbase who want a more modern approach to running the club while simultaneously demanding a return to traditional values? How do you reconcile people like me who think they waste money constantly, with those who sing "where's the money gone?"

But you know what? That's the gig. And it's absolutely the gig when you turn a football club upside down in pursuit of a dream that you sold and then didn't deliver on. Thus, for two years both our elected and unelected representatives have been telling Brady these problems and been repeatedly told that they were wrong. 

You're wrong, you don't feel like that, have another go. 

And this is why they fail. 

They fail because they seem incapable of dealing with us on a basic human level. I appreciate that lots of fans like the London Stadium and are far more concerned with the bloody awful team, but there are also lots of us who feel misled and lied to about the whole thing. And still we hear in the accounts about this wonderful, world class arena that we play in and all I can think about is Alan Partridge pointing out that there was over a thousand miles of very pleasurable cruising before the Titanic hit that iceberg.

They're scum, Karren, sub human scum.

All admissions of failure seem to be couched somehow in terms of the failure of others. Problems with the stadium begin with the landlord, issues with the team seem to swing between the likes of Jose Fonte and Robert Snodgrass, before eventually landing on the head of Slaven Bilic, and if all of that doesn't land then there is always bad luck. The accounts speak of an "unprecedented injury crisis" which is a statement you could only make if you had literally never seen West Ham play before.

Even now, the fans are somehow to blame for the team losing 3-0 to Burnley, and not the fact that this squad was assembled by randomly throwing darts at a 2012 Panini sticker album. 

Karren, I know you don't want my advice, but I shall offer it up anyway because I know no other way to help my club. Treat us like human beings. Hear what we have to say, but also listen to it. Approach discussions with fans with the baseline that the stadium move has not delivered what an awful lot of us wanted. Instead of telling them why they're wrong, let them tell you why you're wrong, and then see if that spirit of cooperation can carry you any further than getting a few flags waving around the edge of the pitch before the match. I actually thought that was a nice touch and inspired an interesting discussion about our history with my daughter, but that's scant consolation when Joe Hart is scrabbling around like a fish on a chessboard, and the temporary scaffolding is bending and warping with the weight of angry protesters.

And when you do all of that, and reach the inevitable conclusion that the rest of us got to some time ago - namely that the stadium simply cannot be fit for purpose as a football ground, because it wasn't designed to be - then you need to march up to David Sullivan and tell him that you're going to publicly admit as much and demand that he therefore better find a way to improve the team post haste.

I get that your entire brand is built around infallibility but none of this is going to disappear like you hope it will. West Ham is the Not OK Corral, and you need to acknowledge your own part in that, if you want to have any hope of moving us forward. As it is, I have never felt so disconnected from my club.

After all, you don't get to tell me how I feel. 

*** 

"There's a place where time is dead, and all things stand still

And always will"

- The Handsome Family, "If The World Should End In Fire"

But let us start at the beginning, before the mercury rose and the citadel was stormed. I went to this game in search of faith. A glimpse of a renewed faith in the game I have spent so much time with, and in those people that I have watched it with. Truthfully, it felt like a blessed relief to be going to a match, and not wondering about marches, fans being attacked by their brethren or what new bombshell was going to be dropped in our collective laps. Even then, we must not forget that there are those of our regimental stripe who couldn't attend this game for fear of their own safety, for shame.

But the sun was out and it truly felt like I hadn't watched West Ham play with the sun on my face for years. And for an hour, whisper it, I thought we were the better team. The side still looked disjointed and hastily thrown together - because they are - but there were things to commend here. We went at Burnley with all the vim and vigour that was missing last week, and duly caused them some problems. Marko Arnautovic, Manuel Lanzini and Joao Mario all had chances, but couldn't quite get the perfect look. Such is the nature of Burnley. They are defensive magicians. They are also the most cynical time wasters in the division. Their players spent the entire game feigning head injuries in an attempt to slow the game down and I'd love to say I'd never seen anything like it except they did the exact same thing last year.

Yet for all our flimsy superiority, you always got the sense that - much like a night time stroll in Romford - there was trouble waiting around the corner. Burnley haven't got to their lofty heights by accident. Their success has been built upon a seemingly unsustainable combination of forcing their opponents to miss good chances, and taking their own lesser ones. And falling over a lot. They have almost broken the Expected Goals model, and serve as a salutary reminder that while people like me would reduce the sport to an algorithm, the game itself still remains as gloriously unpredictable as an errant firework. 

West Ham - building character since 1895

And so Dyche introduced Chris Wood after an hour and watched as the Kiwi was immediately involved in two goals within five minutes. The first was offside apparently, but should have been defended better either way. It unfolded like a slow motion replay as Angelo Ogbonna dallied where Wood was purposeful and picked out Ashley Barnes, who took a brief break from throwing himself to the floor to power the ball past Joe Hart's famously vulnerable left hand. The problem with weaknesses is that people will keep exploiting them until you prove they no longer exist. And this one still exists.

There was still time to dream of a renaissance, but by now the gates of Hell had swung open. At one down, against the league's best game killers, we were deep in the mire even before the pitch invasions began. Moyes responded to Dyche outwitting him with a typically late and ineffective substitution. On came Javier Hernandez, and still the visitors kept running straight through the middle of our Papier-mâché midfield. Where have you gone Pedro Obiang? Our nation turns its lonely eyes to you. 

Hart soon fumbled a long range effort and a third went in. I threw my eyes upwards in search of that long departed sun, or maybe the ghostly silhouette of Alan Pardew being projected on to the night sky as our owners turned on their own version of the Bat signal. Now I think about it, that might constitute gallows humour if it wasn't for the fact that the useless bastards might actually bloody do it.

***

"Oh baby, oh baby

Then it fell apart"

- Moby, "Extreme Ways"

But what of the real story? I wrote a short piece for The Guardian in which I was constrained by a word limit. Some picked me up for only saying that "I cannot condone the violence" so let me say here that I condemn it completely. How could anybody not? The fighting in the seats behind the dugouts was so bad that kids had to be ferried forward to the Burnley benches for shelter. These were, I believe, the £5k a year seats where West Ham fans fought each other over I don't even know what. Hope truly does lie in the proles.

Elsewhere, there were four separate pitch incursions which all ended with some form of physical altercation either with players or in the stands after the invaders had returned. The first guy came on holding an A4 poster. This is like holding up a postage stamp to Neil Armstrong while he walked on the moon - it could have said "Wenger Out" for all I know. Having done all of Cheikhou Kouyate's running all day, Mark Noble then appointed himself Chief Steward as well and roughed the guy up. Some think he was wrong, but what I saw was a frustrated man who knew that once pitch invasions start, the team rarely comes back. And true enough we kept conceding goals as various miscreants made their way on, each showing a surprising amount of stamina to make it all the way to the middle.

I don't blame the fans, but anyone who was there can't deny that as soon as the atmosphere turned, the team simply wanted to get out of Dodge. And for those who remember the Bond Scheme protests of the early Nineties, you'll know what I mean when I say that a decent team can rarely coexist with a poisonous atmosphere. Try as we might, that toxicity drips out on to the pitch - or is carried there atop a corner flag - and infects the players. We must remember that they will be gone after all of this, mercenaries caught in the middle of a blood feud. Instead it is us who will remain, silently watching us lose to Barnsley in the Thunderdome and wondering if relegation was truly a price worth paying to vent our frustrations.

But I am getting ahead of myself, because relegation will assuredly not be the fault of the fans, even if some in the media would wish to say it was. Those who protested had every right to do so. I can't understand the desire to go on the pitch, although I surely recognised the homage to the famous Everton invasion against the Bond Scheme. Once again we were shaking hands with the past, and invisible bridge between eras, with the only constant being that the club is still run by spivs and charlatans.

Shaking hands with the past. It's shit here, they both said

But the real spirit of the protest lay in those those who gathered in front of the Director's Box and confronted the architects of this demise. In reality, the situation was horrible, even if I believe that this was entirely caused by a Board who have insisted on chipping away at the foundations of our club and are now finding that the debris is falling squarely on their own heads.

I will say that I hate that Sullivan's children had to face that. Even if they might be too prominent for their tender years, it is indeed worth remembering that they are just kids who didn't deserve to have objects thrown at them and to hear their father abused. They are fans too, remember. Similarly, David Gold was there with his daughters and grandchildren and reportedly left in tears. None of us should be happy about that, nor can we condone those who threw objects. To do so is to cede the moral high ground. There is no need for it. We are on the side of the angels.

But before you think I've changed my mind, let me say once more that this was brought upon themselves. I have previously described the relationship between the fans and the owners as being like a pressure cooker, and the thing with those is that you need a way to release that pressure before it explodes. West Ham fans have got no traction with the club over our complaints, which ultimately culminated in the threat of a protest march. Only then, with that ludicrously sharp Sword of Damocles hanging over their head, did the board deem our points worthy of an audience. Two years and ten thousand marchers to get some flags around the pitch. It's like Agamemnon sacking Troy for a loaf of bread.

But by organising the cancellation of the march, the club skilfully moved the protest into the stadium, for where else could it go? And now the genie is out of the bottle, he won't be returning. The fans might not know exactly what it is they want, but they can say with certainty that it is not this. And yet, I am not among those who subscribe to the view that relegation might not be a bad thing. It will set the club back years, and destroy our finances. If you're annoyed at the interest payments to the owners now, wait until we're in the Championship and can't borrow against our TV money, meaning we have to get it from Sullivan instead.

I know, deep down, that the only way to affect the regime change that we desperately need is to continue these protests. To tell them how we feel and have the world hear our side of the story. But I fear that the Catch-22 here is that doing so will be terminal to our hopes of staying up.

The team are bereft of ideas and confidence and that brief flirtation with solidity under Moyes has long since departed. In the last week, our goal difference has taken an even bigger battering than David Sullivan's ego. The protest is entirely necessary for us, because without it we will never get the better team we need to avoid being in these relegation scraps all the time, but it is distracting for the players and may contribute to sending us down. Pick the bones out of that, Yossarian.

We need three wins from somewhere and you'd say that if they aren't taken from Southampton, Stoke and Everton then we won't be long for this world. In effect, I'm asking an unruly mob to strike a balance between protest and lung bursting support. I think I might be being a touch optimistic.

***

"I am now a central part of your mind's landscape, 

Whether you care or do not"

- Morrissey, "The More You Ignore Me, The Closer I Get"

But this is where we are now. Without those protests on Saturday, would the full wattage of the media currently be shining with such force on our corner of the footballing world? Probably not. We have seen Miguel Delaney, Jacob Steinberg, Sam Wallace, Ken Early and John Dillon scratch the surface of our situation and find interesting stuff beneath their fingernails. With protests planned before the Southampton game, the best option open to the club now would probably be to allow them to proceed in the hope that supporters can exorcise their revolutionary spirit in the morning and concentrate on the match in the afternoon.

Which brings me back to the owners. I have wavered on their continuing stewardship because I fear the path taken by Coventry, Blackpool, Blackburn, Aston Villa and so many other former contemporaries. I have previously written that a bad manager can set a club back years, while bad owners can hamstring you for a generation. But the moment these guys chose not to intervene when they knew their own supporters were being threatened was the moment I wanted them gone. I'll take my chances in the lawless bandit country that is football ownership, if it means that we can go to games without worrying about our own safety.

But leaving that aside for the moment, for such a departure is not imminent, the crucial thing for them to decide now is whether they are in this as fans or businessmen. They currently flit between the two, alienating everyone as they go. I have no objection to owners who lend the club money at high interest rates, but then they don't get to turn around and claim that they are exempt from fan protest because they are "custodians" and not owners, and they damn well ought to be competent enough on an individual level to know exactly what role they are performing for the club. As it is, Sullivan denied being Director of Football in December, sandwiched in between two sets of accounts that explicitly identified him as performing that role. That is not indicative of good corporate governance.

They did well to get that in

And how grimly I laughed as Sullivan bemoaned the failure of the minimum wage stewards to put themselves between him and an angry mob, considering that he couldn't have cared less when they did the exact thing same last season but it was our kids who were bearing the brunt of it all. I say again - they fail because there is no human face to the club, and apparently not even a scintilla of empathy around that boardroom table. I found it telling that Sir Trevor Brooking stayed in his seat and faced down the mob on Saturday, while others disappeared to the safety of the hospitality suites. A rare glimpse of dignity amidst the turmoil.

I hope we don't go down, because the repercussions of that go far beyond the boardroom and the playing staff. The wider club is diminished and the clock is once agin reset to "rebuilding", a mindset that has felt like our default for nearly two decades now. We operate in the face of a permanent storm front. We are reducing to being a walking "hold my beer" meme. These people have inflicted great damage upon the name of our club.

Forget those media critics who helicopter in for a quick look around the Director's Box and then leave, baffled at the level of anger among fans. I follow the Danny Baker code over people like Jim White and Jason Burt - ask yourself when the last time was that they ever paid to go to a game and if it wasn't any time recently then you can discount their opinion. Proper journalists are examining our club and finding what we have long known to be true; that there is a deep malaise afflicting the soul of West Ham. And whether we like it or not, it's very possible that the spark that reignited the fire in our belly was the sight of those fans confronting our owners. It may be jagged and edgy and hard and rough but in many ways, that is West Ham.

I don't know where we go from here, but I do know that there is no going back.

Burnley 1 - 1 West Ham (And Other Ramblings)

Two steps forward, two steps back. And so the dance continues.

West Ham with ten men? Yes, no, very strong

In the lead up to the 2012 Olympic Games, the BBC launched an under the radar mockumentary called "Twenty Twelve", which very neatly satirised the delivery team for the Games and successfully captured every type of office stereotype imaginable in doing so.

Once the games were over, the idea probably should have died but instead they moved the subject on to the BBC with a different-but-similar series called "W1A". Against my expectations I found it pretty funny as the series continued to nail all the office politics, incompetence and misplaced entitlement that pervade most large professional organisations. And I say that as an avowed lover of the BBC.

As such, when series 3 arrived I stuck it on looking for some mild amusement and instead...I have never been more frustrated watching a TV show in my life.

Instead of having the characters do or say anything interesting or believable, they just repeat catchphrases at each other for the entirety of the show, while a couple of them are now so stupid that I'm beginning to wonder if the writers are actually attempting to mock people with mental health issues.

And what, I can sense you wondering, could this possibly have to do with West Ham? Well, as with W1A, I am getting very fucking frustrated with this season.

***

West Ham played well in this game. There can't be any disputing that given the circumstances. Indeed, should anyone disagree bring them before me and we shall duel with pistols at dawn. This will, I imagine, be a lot less dangerous than it sounds given that if we're both West Ham fans I strongly suspect we'll both miss.

But here we are again basking in the glow of lost points and reduced to wondering about tomorrow, while bemoaning the caveats of the present.

We finally got an answer as to how Slaven Bilic was planning to fit all his attacking options into the team as he just selected every single one of them, and then had them all play Rock, Paper, Scissors in the changing room to determine that Cheikhou Kouyate would play the defensive midfield role.

This seemed particularly bonkers given that Burnley started with a five man midfield, but in fairness to Bilic it was all looking fairly rosy when Michail Antonio opportunistically latched on to a Joe Hart hoof to round Nick Pope and open the scoring.

I particularly enjoyed the Route One nature of the goal as you can't get caught short in midfield if you just smash it over the top of them, after all. "UEFA badges, I shit 'em" yelled Slav in celebration.

But again, in defence of Bilic the real assist on the goal belonged to Kouyate whose prodigious work rate in midfield saw him break up a Burnley attack and it was his backpass that Hart howitzered into the home half, and past the sleeping Ben Mee for Antonio to finish.

I could have sworn I had a brain in here when I left this morning

Sadly, having taken the lead in the 19th minute, we were allowed all of eight minutes of happiness, because West Ham, before Andy Carroll decided that was quite enough of that and got himself dismissed for two identical challenges in the space of 99 seconds. 

In defence of our pissed Geordie Samurai, I felt the first challenge was fairly unremarkable and was itself identical to a challenge by Burnley's James Tarkowski on Carroll just moments before which went unpunished. Several years of watching Carroll have probably inured me somewhat to the sheer physicality of his play, but I felt he was a victim of his reputation on the first yellow card. 

Having been booked however, it would generally be considered sensible to play within yourself for a while and only go into challenges where you're absolutely certain of winning the ball. Instead, Carroll brainlessly launched into another clash with Mee, leading with his arm albeit with his eyes fixed on the ball, and was rightly sent off. 

Thus, just like that, we lost the opportunity of seeing how could play with all this attacking talent on display or how we would perform with the comfort of a lead and instead had to watch yet another resilient, brilliantly organised and ultimately heartbreaking rearguard action courtesy of a frustrated front player too selfish to channel his anger into anything constructive. 

And so it was that we channelled W1A. The frustration of watching and waiting. Of knowing yet another opportunity to progress had been spurned. And now it's the same old catchphrases - "Yeah, no, sure" for "wait until we get everyone fit" and "so that's all good" for "you can't judge us with ten men". Great stuff, but can we hear something new, please, before I completely lose my shit?

We must now wait another week for a first chance to decide what we have here, and yet we're in October and other teams have long since been through all that fine tuning. So, unlucky though he might-sort-have-been, Carroll deserves nothing but opprobrium for leaving his team to spend an hour defending a lead in a game they could easily have won. 

***

I reckon the very best and worst of Slaven Bilic was on display here. 

The strength of his management seems to be very much around how he relates to his players and converting that into a loyalty towards him and the wider cause. The reason I thought Newcastle was the end for him was that it was the first time I felt I had visibly seen his team stop playing for him, in a game where they had no reason to do so. 

But, whether you agree with his team selections or the fact that he falls out with fringe players with a frequency rarely seen outside of Game of Thrones, it can't be denied that there is a resilience to his team. Here, as at Southampton, they battled gamely for over an hour with a man down and were again only denied at the death. 

I often attempt to use statistics and metrics in my analysis on here, but I think this is a weekend to abandon that in favour of some amateur psychology. Let's face it, people like me write about tactics and Expected Goals because we have no insight into what goes on in the changing room or within the team dynamic. I write about those things because it's legitimate to have an opinion about them, but when fans talk wistfully of 4-4-2 or 3-4-3 we should always remember that we know nothing really. 

We have no idea who is carrying an injury, who is in the middle of a bitter divorce, who is suffering with depression, who is in debt to local bookies, who has a family member with a terminal illness, who is trying to engineer a move away and who is little more than a drain on the morale of the wider group. All of this is hidden away from us and it's worth remembering when we clamour for the likes of Diafra Sakho to be in the team, that the dynamics of a football team probably don't differ that much from those of the office, the building site or the oil rig.

Still, in looking at Andy Carroll, it's tempting to try and figure out what is happening there. Here is a man who has gone six months - but typically, just six games - without a goal, and who had the indignity of being booed by his own fans when named Man of the Match last time out. He has seen the arrival of Chicharito and hears the jeers when the Mexican is withdrawn instead of him. 

But beyond all of that, Carroll must see the team and the players in it and realise that he is the odd man out. He can't have failed to notice how much more attractively we played yesterday after he went off, even with a man down. Twice in the early stages of the second half Michail Antonio could have doubled our lead after splendid team moves. 

The first, in particular, was a joy as we put together a move of angular precision, the likes of which we haven't seen since the Zola era and which nearly culminated in a goal that would have been a spiritual cousin to Carlton Cole's wonder strike at Wigan. 

And I think Carroll sees all of that and feels the frustration that we all do. I sympathise with him because even when we play long ball we don't do it all that well, and when we try and play shorter it doesn't really suit him. Equally, he hasn't had Lanzini to play off either, and no doubt would be looking for the Argentine to provide him some of that service he has been so sorely lacking. Indeed, we are eight games into the season and only Chicharito of our attacking royalty has been available for them all. Carroll might very well feel that he's entitled to get a crack playing alongside them all as well. 

So, it's amateur psychology alright, but if I was looking for evidence of a player frustrated and unhappy with his existence I might look at the guy who smashed into two opposition players in a minute and got himself sent off when we were 1-0 up away from home. 

***

But if the best of Bilic is seen in how his players stick with him, the worst most be in his tendency to crowbar players into the team rather than make more difficult decisions about dropping them. Antonio at right back was the start of all this but we've also seen Hernandez and Lanzini marooned out wide and today it was his deployment of Kouyate in a holding role. 

I thought Kouyate did well in the first half but it doesn't seem like the best use of his talent or mobility to deploy him this way. It also feels like it would be borderline suicidal to do this against better teams than Burnley. The dismissal of Carroll forced a change as Obiang was introduced at half time in place of Arnatuovic, who I imagine was fairly sanguine about the whole thing, and we looked far more solid from that point on. 

The problem with that was it pushed Lanzini out wide, although one would hope that was simply the necessity of the situation. But in the grander scheme of things, I would like Bilic to return to a basic stratagem of playing his men in their correct positions and only when completely, undeniably fit. 

In my rush to live and die by the merits of xG and xA metrics, it's true that from time to time I think I've forgotten some of the more intangible things in life. Confidence is a good example of this, being as how it's somewhat immeasurable but you sure as hell know when a team doesn't have it. 

Passion. But also brown shoes with a blue suit

And so it goes that I think Bilic can sometimes impinge on the confidence of his own team, simply by virtue of his apparent belief that good players can play anywhere. The irony of this is apparently lost on him, who as a rugged centre half didn't spend many games playing wide on the right.  

I like Bilic, even if I think he should have been dismissed a long time ago. He is erudite and articulate in a second language, and engaging in his manner. He doesn't seem to lean as heavily on ranting at his players or some nebulous concept like "passion", in the same way as the typical British manager. I still want him to succeed because if he does, I can at least accept that it will be enjoyable for me as a fan. That's slightly different to his predecessor Sam Allardyce, where success frequently meant further entrenchment of an already unwatchable style of play. 

But we can't complain about this result or performance. His team did him proud here, and having too many players for the spots available, and a multitude of possible formations isn't actually a bad thing. When that happens at Manchester United and Chelsea, it's considered a positive thing, after all. 

***

For all that, we rode our luck a bit here at times. Just after Carroll was dismissed, Joe Hart appeared to bring down Chris Wood with a challenge that was about as well timed as Donna Karan's defence of Harvey Weinstein. 

Referee Stuart Attwell waved that one away, perhaps still considering that he'd just sent Andy Carroll off but possibly left the referees changing room unlocked, and our luck held when a second half Gudmundson effort hit the post, then hit Hart and somehow didn't go in. 

All in all, I think we have to be happy with a point as the Burnley equaliser was deserved and a long time in the making, even if our defending looked pretty knackered by the time it went in. Winston Reid and Jose Fonte having earned the right to be exhausted by virtue of a day of dominant defensive work. 

Many seem to be pointing the finger at Aaron Cresswell for his failure to prevent the cross from coming in, but I think that ignores the fact that Arnautovic and Lanzini in front of him have the kind of work ethic that makes The Stone Roses look like Amazon employees. 

In the surge of demand for Arthur Masuaku it's surely worth remembering that he too would have nobody in front of him as cover, whilst it seems eminently likely that Bilic has told his full backs not to press too far forward as everybody else in his team is already doing that. 

***

I'll tell you what else I could do without; the now trademark Chicharito shake of the head and mini strop every time he gets substituted. While I appreciate the desire to play and the overall general lust to remain on the pitch, it's not really that egregious to take off a centre forward who hasn't scored or looked like scoring, especially when his strike partner has already been sent off for throwing an elbow around like he was trying to break the emergency glass. 

This is what Ben Mee looks like to Andy Carroll

Of course, if there is an upside to Carroll being dismissed it's that Bilic will be forced to try and find a way to play without him next week. We have those opening thirty minutes against Spurs to fall back on, as some kind of evidence that hope lies this in this direction, or at least it did until Antonio pulled damaged a hamstring and apparently also the fabric of time between the London Stadium and the Underworld and the next thing we knew we were 3-0 down to Spurs. 

Whether Bilic plays Sakho or Hernandez as the rapier point of his attack, he will surely restore Obiang to the line up for a bit of defensive ballast and deploy the others in advance of him. 

In that scenario, I see Carroll as a near perfect supersub upon his return. It's not so much that Carroll is a knife being brought to a gunfight, but that he is an old fashioned cannon from a Lord Nelson era warship. He's big, heavy, cumbersome, slow to load and absolutely deadly when you eventually get it lined up properly, but don't take too long because the other guy undeniably has something quicker. 

That kind of option off the bench could be gamebreaking against tiring defences, but the idea that he can do that from the start seems fanciful, and mostly destroyed by the evidence of 2017. If there is encouragement to be gleaned from history, one can look at the 2014/15 season when Sam Allardyce was forced into playing a diamond behind Sakho and Valencia due to injuries to Carroll and Nolan, and we were fourth at Christmas. 

That side had Alex Song in the holding role, which is a touch of quality missing from this current outfit, but you'd also think that between them Antonio, Lanzini, Arnautovic and Hernandez offer more quality than was available then. 

But we can't spend too much time looking back. This is the time to start our season and get some - any - forward momentum. Whatever Bilic does it would really be rather brilliant if it wasn't frustrating or in the style of a mockumentary. 

After all, I don't want to be frustrated any more - I want our season to start and not be waylaid by yet more setbacks and excuses. 

To paraphrase Ian Fletcher - another false start? 

Yes, no, that's not all good. 

Burnley 1 - 2 West Ham (And Other Ramblings)

1. Holiday

So here we are. And there we were.

Stamford Bridge, August 2016 seems like a lifetime ago. On that balmy night under a crimson London sky, we still had the fresh faced innocence of youth. Back then we could destroy Death Stars and rescue princesses. We were Luke Skywalker in Star Wars. At Chelsea we came striding on to the stage, bursting with the confidence of a season spent bloodying the noses of the elite and with the strut that comes from having Dimitri Payet in your ranks. We lost, naturally, but with the ill fortune that seems to have been our constant companion during Slaven Bilic's tenure.

West Ham fan - August 2016

But ultimately we ended somewhat as we started, with injuries everywhere, no fit strikers and a seemingly terminal lack of direction to our play. By now we were limping forlornly to the finish of a dismal season. Now we were Luke Skywalker at the denouement of The Empire Strikes Back.

West Ham fan - May 2017. I hope none of you kissed your sister. 

In that vein, this wasn't a terrible game. It had the important feature of being unimportant, allowing us to watch it in the slightly catatonic, vacation like state that end of season games have when you're a bang average, mid table, vanilla scoop of a team in the giant Ben and Jerry's stand that is the Premier League. But that same lack of tension betrays something in itself. None of us watch our teams for safety. We watch to be entertained and for the pursuit of victory, however vain that might often be. To watch, perchance to dream, if I might misquote the Bard. 

However much it might knot the stomach, I think I prefer my football with something riding on it. 

2. Giving Up The Gun

I have seen some comments that paint this season as a triumph of sorts for Bilic. Amid the rubble left behind by Payet, he has fashioned a team that finished just two points - or a last minute Darren Randolph error at Sunderland - from 8th place. The stadium move, injuries like Platoon and a disrupted dressing room were among the trials he faced, and in the end he came through it all to lead us to 11th place.

There is no doubt some truth to all of that, but it's also true that the gap between ourselves and Everton (16 points) is enormous, and that's before we even consider the distant top six. We are firmly embedded in that glut of mediocrity that covers the bottom two thirds of the league.

I also find it hard to look past the self inflicted nature of some of our problems. The constant lack of a right back and the ludicrous and damagingly long exclusion of Adrian were both issues Bilic brought upon himself. Likewise, he must have some say in our transfers and therefore deserves a slice of the opprobrium for them, for if he really has no involvement then he should be moved on for a manager with a bit more spine who won't let his bosses suggest he does.

Sadly, as much as I find Bilic to be personally engaging and a seemingly very decent guy, I also can't look past those repeated shellackings at home. Arsenal, Man City, Liverpool, Man City again, Southampton, Leicester and fucking Watford all scored at least three times at our ground, whilst it would be remiss to ignore that we also somehow managed to go 4-0 down to West Brom without even the hint of a match fixing scandal. 

At some point it feels like we need to stop fixating on the rumour that Payet was being disruptive and focus a little more on the fact that the former Croatia centre half and manager couldn't organise his defence to stand in a straight line and stop Salomon Rondon from scoring. 

Arguing for Bilic's dismissal is pointless as he isn't going to be fired and also because I'm a blogger and nobody listens to me. But it feels reasonable to point out that Bilic surely won't survive another season of shambolic defending like this again. Sure, David Sullivan is happy to use the Club to promote his straight to DVD story about little known East End gangsters the Krays, but letting in four at West Brom is a bit embarrassing all round. 

3. I Stand Corrected

I wonder if I owe Andre Ayew an apology.

Probably not as he's never read a word of anything I've ever written and therefore doesn't give a shit about anything I think. But, if you can just exclude the memory of him having an epileptic fit last week and hitting the post from two yards out, he's actually been playing pretty well of late.

Deadly from 3 yards. If you forget last week. 

He started this game up front on his own because Bilic lost a game of pre match swingball to Sean Dyche or something, but made a very decent fist of it anyway. He's absolutely not a front man, but as a support striker you can see his merits easily enough. If nothing else he has the happy knack of finding himself in goalscoring positions more often than any of his team mates. 

The early pickings were slim as Burnley exploited the gaps in behind our wing backs very effectively, and opened the scoring after a glacial Andre Gray cross went through the legs of all three of our centre halves, two barstools, a giraffe and a snooker table before Sam Vokes tapped it past Adrian for the opening goal. 

We were level within minutes however, as Sofiane Feghouli ran on to a lovely Ayew flick to smash home a very well worked equaliser. That chance arose after Burnley midfielder Ashley Westwood fouled Ayew and was rightly booked. It seemed inevitable then, that the home midfielder would see red when shortly after he landed a knee high tackle on James Collins. 

Weirdly, referee Bobby Madley decided that knee high tackles are fine so long as you do them on the last day of the season and it's sunny and all the fans are in fancy dress. As such, Westwood got a mild telling off, while Lanzini then got a yellow card for a fairly inconsequential trip a few minutes later.

Premier League refereeing continues to distress me. 

As it was, Sean Dyche would later announce that his team should have been "out of sight" at half time, which confused me as his team managed one shot on goal all day, so perhaps he really meant he literally didn't want to see them as they were a bit crap. No matter, as we came out firing after the break and dominated much of the play. This included winning our first corner after an hour which we then executed so brilliantly that after taking it short on the left we somehow managed to engineer a situation where the ball made it's way out to the right for Jose Fonte to cross towards Feghouli. This actually happened. 

The winner eventually came when a Fernandes shot was parried straight up into the air by Tom Heaton, only to bounce off the bar to a waiting Ayew while Burnley defenders flung themselves into the net like parachutists exiting a glider. Aye meanwhile, buried it, as he is absolutely, unequivocally deadly from three yards except when he isn't. 

Thereafter we had several chances to get a third on the break, but managed to butcher them all like we were drafting policy for the Tory manifesto. Thus we were left to cling to a 2-1 win that propels us to the giddy heights of two places below Bournemouth, with one victory more than 17th placed Watford.

All in all we've generally looked a better team away from home this season, where the uncertain atmosphere and general malaise of the London Stadium has been but a memory. More importantly, on the road we've been able to sit back and seek to hit teams on the counter and we did that very well here in the second half, frequently disrupting play high up the pitch and then leveraging that into opportunities for our wide players to run behind and then spectacularly fail to play the correct final ball. 

No one disputes that there will need to be some major personnel changes this summer, but there does seem to be a method to how Bilic plays away from home that is working at least some of the time. We've still been too passive at places like Arsenal and Everton, but it's not hard to see the blueprint. The trick for next year is to find a more effective way to play at home. 

4. White Sky

Anyway, I feel like Ayew needs a song and the chorus of this is perfect. 

Skip to 1:06 if you can't stand the preppy magnificence of Vampire Weekend but either way I'm sure you'll agree it's perfect and not at all out of our vocal range. 

I feel like maybe I'm padding the article a bit this week. 

5. The Kids Don't Stand A Chance

On a scale of "1" to "Oh Christ, What Now?", how much did you enjoy this tweet by David Gold?

I think we all have to except that it is extremely unlikely that a teenager will break into a PL team full of seasoned international. dg https://t.co/R0c1SimdVr

— David Gold (@davidgold) 20 May 2017

The thing is, I actually have some sympathy for Gold here. He was responding to a graphic showing West Ham had zero minutes from teenagers in the league this year, albeit this was prior to Declan Rice's four minute cameo today that may well have been Bilic's way of trying to shut up his chairman.

I think what Gold was clumsily trying to say is that most youngsters don't make it at Premier League level. This isn't news to anyone who watches the game, but the problem is that he said it at a time when fans are particularly desperate for help from the youth team because the senior squad looks so sparse.

So, fresh on the back of the u23 team winning promotion to Division 1 of what is effectively the old reserves league, fans were clamouring for some kids to be blooded. Nowhere was there much questioning of the fact that they were in Division 2 for a reason and didn't even win it but needed a play off. Instead, there was the usual lust for "something else". Football fans at heart are romantic and we are suckers for the story of the local kid coming through the ranks while skilfully ignoring the reality that when it goes wrong - Ince, Lampard, Defoe - it does so spectacularly.

But the thing that Gold really didn't appreciate is the value that players acquire in the eyes of fans when they can't see them playing. Diafra Sakho has had a brilliant season from this perspective as he is more highly rated now than ever, simply by virtue of being absent from the fray for much of the year. Likewise, young players like Martinez, Rice and Oxford simply must be better than what we have because there is no evidence to the contrary. One might point to the fact that our Academy hasn't produced a worthwhile first team player since Junior Stanislas, but that will never land with those fans who demand youth as the answer to all, and the elixir for our dying first team.

Gold's angle, I hope, was that young players who are good enough will always force their way into the side through their performance in training or out on loan. As prime examples Martinez didn't do much at Oxford, whilst Oxford didn't do much at Reading, which is a sentence you may have to read a couple of times to make sense of. However, Martinez scored a couple of goals in said play offs, getting lots of fans excited, although many seemed to ignore the fact that Newcastle u23 seem to defend in homage to Kevin Keegan and therefore didn't actually bother doing any.

Look, I'd love for our young players to emerge soon and be brilliant, but I also trust our Academy coaches to properly evaluate them to determine those who are ready. They have the advantage over 99% of West Ham fans because they have at least, you know, seen them play.

I'd also add that calling on them too young can be devastating for young players if it simply highlights their lack of readiness. I'm not entirely sure that Stephen Bywater ever recovered from his traumatic Bradford experience, as an example.

I'd like to think this is what Gold was trying to convey but, yet again, we find that tweets are rarely useful for addressing points with any nuance to them. What's perhaps most disturbing about this whole episode is that Gold somehow thought tackling it in 140 characters was a good idea. Yet again one of our chairmen is now a media story, as happens with depressing regularity, when a simple question to a media officer about whether this was a good idea for a tweet would presumably have elicited a "What? Jesus Christ, no! Give me that phone" response that I feel could preface about 50% of all public pronouncements made by our current Board.

There is no doubt in my mind that our Academy has underperformed for years, but look at Chelsea for a salutary lesson on youth production. They regularly have the best youth set up around, but are yet to graduate anyone properly to the first team due to the fact that none have been good enough to displace the incumbent. One might call that harsh, or simply the nature of professional football, but the point is that if even the best Academy in England can't progress many youngsters to help the first team then perhaps we should readjust our sights accordingly.

However, in some ways that issue at Chelsea should be our biggest selling point. We should be advertising ourselves to young British footballers as a place to come and play because at least there is a pathway to the first team here. "Come and play for us - we're not Chelsea!" - that sort of thing.

Which brings us back to where we started. Instead of that positive message, this ill judged tweet, however Gold meant it, gave the impression of the exact opposite and punctured any good feeling that had built up after the u23 play off win. I like David Gold and think his willingness to interact with fans on social media is both stupid and slightly endearing, but getting dragged into topics like this is just ridiculous. A good rule of thumb, David - if it requires to you to send anything more than three tweets to clarify your position, then it's too nuanced a subject for Twitter. Go write a long ranting post on Facebook like everyone else.

6. Run

I can't be bothered to write anything further about a season ending game at Burnley, especially given that it had all the dramatic tension of a North Korean election, albeit with less accurate shooting. So instead let me give you some H List end of season awards:

Player of the Season

1. Manuel Lanzini
2. Michail Antonio
3. Pedro Obiang

Apologies to: Winston Reid

No apologies to: Darren Randolph, Simone Zaza, Gokhan Tore

In the week that he gets a call up to the full Argentinian squad, Lanzini picks up this prestigious award as well. There's a new series of Game of Thrones on the way too - Christ, what a time to be alive, Manu.

I won! I beat Tore!

Picking up the mantle of being our only creative player after Payet disappeared, the diminutive midfielder was wonderful for the second half of the season. He scored crucial goals (helloooooo Spurs) and generally showed his team mates how to hold on to the ball for longer than the life span of a Tory policy on social care.

Behind him was Michail Antonio who started the season brilliantly, when played in his correct position which is Not Right Back. However, he tailed off a little towards the end and got injured before the run in. His fearsome physicality and unorthodox style made him one of our few leading lights this season, and the thought of him playing a full season with a proper striker in front is actually quite exciting. He also made the England squad but didn't get a game as Sam Allardyce opted for Theo Walcott instead and was fired shortly thereafter. Possibly as a result.

Third place goes to Pedro Obiang, who inexplicably started the season behind Havard Nordtveit but was soon making that position his own. As is customary, his season was cut short due to surgery, otherwise he probably would have won this award. He is, by now, the prime candidate to start in our central midfield with Kouyate next year.

7. Unbelievers

Goal of the Season

1. Dimitri Payet vs Middlesbrough (h)
2. Andy Carroll vs Crystal Palace (h)
3. Winston Reid vs Sunderland (h)

Apologies to: Manuel Lanzini vs Crystal Palace (a), Manuel Lanzini vs Leicester (h), Michail Antonio vs Watford (h)

I know, I know. It's not fashionable to speak positively of Payet, but to watch him slalom through the Middlesbrough defence was to watch a master at work. Carroll's spectacular bicycle kick at home to Palace was itself majestic, but it really only required one thing to be done well. By contrast Payet needed to do multiple things, moving at speed and ended up beating four players before slotting past the keeper.

Put another way, I think Payet could have scored Carroll's goal but the reverse isn't true. The mixture of skills required was sublime, and the fact that he later revealed himself to be an utter Sheffield United of a man doesn't erase that.

Elsewhere, I have a particular soft spot for Winston Reid's last minute winner against Sunderland as this was a last gasp throw of the dice where we eschewed giving it to any of our forward players and instead asked our centre half to do a Cruyff turn on the edge of the box and smash it home with his weaker foot. As one does.

8. Young Lion

Best Individual Performance

1. Cheikhou Kouyate vs Spurs (h)
2. Winston Reid vs Spurs (h)
3. Aaron Cresswell vs Crystal Palace (a)

Apologies to: Manuel Lanzini vs Spurs (a), Andy Carroll vs Middlesbrough (a), Michail Antonio vs Liverpool (a)

No apologies to: Darren Randolph vs Sunderland (a), Havard Nordtveit vs Liverpool (h), Gokhan Tore vs Literally Anyone

Victor Wanyama, Eric Dier - meet Cheikhou Kouyate, destroyer of seasons.

I'm just going to pick you up and put you out of the way. Big boys stuff, yeah?

It says much that all of the performances from the Spurs home game could have made their way in here, and none of it really dispels the myth that this is our Cup Final. Kouyate was immense, however, and gave us all a chance to nod and smile knowingly whenever our Spurs brethren start going on about the fearsome Wanyama.

Behind him Winston Reid was sublime, snuffling out Harry Kane - an achievement that would take on even greater merit when Kane would subsequently score eight times in his next three games.

It says an awful lot that the next best I could think of was a game in which the player in question was actually sent off. Cresswell made his return from serious injury at Palace and was superb up until referee Martin Atkinson went the full Hackett and dismissed him for having an offensive taste in music.

Elsewhere Lanzini turned in loads of brilliant games and could have easily filled all three spots himself, but I am nothing if not mercurial.

9. Step

Best Team Performance

1. Spurs (h)
2. Southampton (a)
3. Liverpool (a)

I doubt this can really have been a surprise to anyone. Our only decent home performance of the season against a good team and it came when we most wanted it. Half of the team were injured but we swarmed all over a neutered Spurs and Lanzini's second half winner was the least we all deserved for a season of rare travails.

Elsewhere we were much better away from home, and the come from behind win at Southampton was a doozy, as was the point earned at Anfield which is so rare that we welcomed it like a decent Ed Sheeran song. Or I imagine we would have done if such a thing existed.


10. Ya Hey

And with that, rather half hearted, effort we come to the end of the season. I would like to thank all of you who have persevered with The H List, and I want to say now how much I greatly appreciate every comment, like, share, retweet, link, upvote, subscription to the mailing list or just general nice feedback. It's been a laborious season in many ways, with the games often being shrouded in negativity and many of our faults going unaddressed for long periods, making the blog often feel repetitive.

I am therefore indebted to those of you who have kept reading and kept sharing my work. I can assure you that without that kindness I wouldn't bother carrying on.

In particular I would like to thank Graeme and Gordon at KUMB for carrying the H List on their site and to Phil and Jim from the Stop! Hammertime podcast who have been kind enough to have me on the show a few times this year. Michael Casagrande and Rob Coker were especially generous in helping me out with tickets and Andy Ellis single handedly ended the Lukaku streak by putting me in the Executive Boxes against Everton. I am indebted to you all.

Jacob Steinberg, Terry Land, Emily Pulham and Dan Silver were kind enough to participate in a roundtable with me and have foolishly agreed to do so again. Be prepared for Director of Football questions folks and keep an eye out for that sometime in the next month.

And lastly, I really must mention my wife - Mrs Shark - who never reads this blog ("it's too long - why on earth would anyone bother?" she says not unreasonably, before spending two hours reading Facebook posts), but is unfailingly supportive of me writing it, and puts up with a lot of me swearing at the iMac over our full back adventures.

I can't say for sure if The H List will return in the same format next season as there are a couple of other irons in the fire (not Zaza and Tore, sadly) whereby I might be doing some writing for some other publications next season. It's not my intention to abandon The H List however, but maybe my wife might get her wish and I might abridge it a little, or alter the frequency. We shall see.

That's all in the future, however, and I do plan to put some articles out over the summer. I was considering some retrospective H List's for games of yesteryear. If there are any you think would be decent let me know in the comments, and if I saw the game I'll give it a whirl.

And with that, I'll bid you all adieu for now. For all my whinging I love West Ham as one might love a family member. I know every flaw and every failing, but I also love them unfailingly and with the ferocity of a raging forest fire, and being able to share that with like minded Hammers is a privilege I don't take lightly.

Thanks to you all.

West Ham 1 - 0 Burnley (And Other Ramblings)

1.  D'You Know What I Mean?

I thought you booed this kind of thing?

This was one of those nights. 

Nothing really worked, from the trains to the ticket office to the deployment of Manuel Lanzini in support of Andy Carroll. It all stumbled along, barely functioning, until the referees whistle put us out of our misery and sent us off into the chilly embrace of Karren's world class transport links. 

If nothing else, this was a return to the Allardycian splendour of two years ago. Had Big Sam produced this disjointed, disconnected performance we'd have whipped out the traditional East London  vuvuzelas and booed him until he thought he was George Osborne.

The curious thing about that of course, is that we've wanted this for a while. A dreamy 4-0 win would have been just fine, but let's not run before we're on solid foods. This was a professional but drab, functional but dreary 1-0 home win. We scored when the usually faultless Mark Noble missed a penalty for the first time in years, but tucked away the rebound, and then rode out a mild Burnley fightback to secure the win. 

We have now won four league games this season, all by a 1-0 scoreline, and we have yet to win a game in which the opposition have scored. So yes, this was a tedious Muse album of a game, but a win is a win is a win.

2. I Hope, I Think, I Know

The game hinged on the aforementioned penalty, and it was a curious turn of events from start to finish. Things began with a Payet corner that the returning Carroll thumped goalwards with all the vigour of a pissed Geordie giraffe scrumping an apple. As it dropped towards Tom Heaton, both Antonio and Kouyate converged upon the keeper and seemed to foul him. Referee Bobby Madley chose to ignore this and instead played on, before blowing up when Winston Reid was sent tumbling by Ben Mee. 

I thought Reid was fouled, but felt Heaton was too, but I also don't care about the perceived injustice largely because we should have had a penalty earlier when Will Keane fairly obviously handled in the box. I don't quite know how Madley missed that one as he had a good view, and it was the clearest misuse of a hand since Friends devoted an entire episode to Joey having an identical hand twin.

Noble then took the penalty and presented Heaton with a weakly struck, seemingly poorly placed effort that the Burnley keeper saved easily, although he then got lucky with the rebound. In general it was in keeping with the all round not-quite-good-enough nature of the evening.

Noble is actually a fascinating penalty taker, as I was discussing on Twitter recently with the excellent blogger @penaltykickstat (blog found here). He has a relatively low xPG (0.73) when he takes penalties, meaning that based on the location of his shots he wouldn't expect to score as frequently as he does (actual PG 0.93). In short he should only score 73% of the time, but does score 93% of the time, prior to tonight. The below heat map shows this clearly:

What's really noticeable about this, is how often the keeper dives the wrong way, with only 13% guessing correctly on his previous attempts. If you believe that this is an actual skill, rather than luck, then you can see why his xPG would be low, because he is constantly striking his penalties into the empty half of the net and therefore he doesn't need to be so precise with his placement. I hadn't really considered this until @penaltykickstat pointed this out to me but I quite like it as a theory.

It also seems to fit with something I've thought for a very long time, which is that if the keeper would have saved a penalty had he dived the right way, then it actually isn't that great of a penalty to begin with. What's also clear is that the higher the penalty, the better the chance of scoring, and yet most of Noble's are hit low. I never thought I'd say it, but Mark Noble needs to channel his inner Keith Richards and get high a bit more often. 

Noble's only miss during the period covered was against Spurs on the opening day of the 14/15 season because of course it fucking was. 

You can see the Spurs one on here, so far left that it makes Jeremy Corbyn look like Oswald Moseley. For completeness, I should say that I do recall one other miss for Noble which came against Chelsea in 2009 because of course it fucking did.

As for tonight's effort, it actually had an xPG of 0.83 which is higher than his average penalty. So maybe we should just credit Tom Heaton with being a good keeper, accept that Noble is still one of the better penalty takers around and keep an eye on whether he can keep sending keepers the wrong way. 

I should also point out that of our three penalties this year, Winston Reid has won two of them, and he continues to display a lovely ability to fall over with great conviction. 

3. Where Did It All Go Wrong?

This game was actually very hard to write about. I watched it live, then went home, thawed out and watched the highlights back and I still struggled to hit upon anything illuminating to say. It just...happened...and now it sits in the section of my memory where I put things that I have absolutely no opinion on, such as anybody's Facebook Year in Review slideshow, golf, Mark Ronson or the Fast and the Furious films. I acknowledge these things are part of human history but they have never registered in my consciousness with enough force to get me to care about them one way or another.

Put another way, if you told me Mark Ronson fell down a ravine looking at your Facebook 2016 slideshow whilst playing golf on the set of Fast and Furious 43, I wouldn't give even a hint of a shit. Which is pretty much how I feel about the events of last night.

Mark Ronson. Apparently.

What I do care about, however, is the outcome of this game. How could I not? These are three of the most important points we will get all year. Having struggled in painful fashion to smuggle two points out of the North West it would have been a disaster to have stumbled here.

We were actually pretty decent in the first half, with lots of nice looking interplay between Payet, Lanzini and Carroll, who were at last being supplemented by a worthwhile Noble performance. Pedro Obiang was dominant once again, and it really seemed inevitable that we would score at some point in the first half. Both defensive midfielders hit the post with raking long range efforts, but by and large Burnley showed their defensive prowess by restricting us to shots from outside the box and blocking anything progressive in the manner of a Republican congress. All of this highlighted again that our shot locations are not good enough, with far too many from outside the box and far too many from Andy Carroll who was apparently wearing his winklepickers again.

Carroll was integral to much of the nice build up though, dropping short to join in with the midfield play and only looking isolated when we went long and failed to get anybody close to him for the inevitable knock downs. This game was actually an interesting insight into the problem that Bilic faces with Carroll. He offers an amazing aerial outlet, but in order for that to be effective we need players around him to pick up the second balls. If he wasn’t merely an existential theory, Andre Ayew might be a good fit for that role by the way.

But we seem to look much more threatening when we get the ball down and play, breaking quickly from midfield and engineering situations that allow our wing backs to raid high up the pitch. This isn’t surprising as it means that Payet and Lanzini are on the ball, and generally that means we are going to be more progressive. Once we go long to Carroll, Lanzini is generally too deep to help him and we cede possession back. Carroll’s link up play was good here tonight, but generally it’s not his strength and the worry is that against better teams we will be forced to go long again, and risk taking our best players out of the game.

4. Don’t Look Back In Anger

At half time I was purring about how this was the best 45 minutes we’d seen at home all year in the league. This probably said more about the season in general than it did about this performance, but it did at least mark the first time we had led in a home league game at the interval. The Watford home game probably had a better level of play, but we did also manage to concede twice, so - yeah, welcome to 2016 West Ham. 

But if this particular game was a “Hopkins” then the first half was Sir Anthony and the second was Katie. Some of this was down to Burnley, who abandoned their plan to bore us all to death, and suddenly started crossing the halfway line with all the authority of new born foals leaving the barn for the first time. By the time the half was done, however, the visitors had created three decent chances and could easily have been level. I’m not sure it was deserved, as such, given their largely timid approach to much of the game but we can’t deny there was plenty of nervous moments towards the end.

That said, we dropped off horribly in the second period with no attacking intent being shown and a worrying failure to pick Burnley off on the break. This was our raison d’etre last season, but with Carroll tiring and keen to get in the queue at Faces, we lost much of our attacking thrust.

I don’t really mind about all of this. This was a match that focused entirely around the three points and we won. We came, we bored, we conquered. Hull await - a phrase never yet used by a human being with any enthusiasm, but there we go. Win on Saturday and a whole multitude of sins will have been papered over. 

5. Whatever

“It’s very frustrating. Every other keeper goes on his back, flails around on the floor and it’s given. Because ours do it the proper way … now we’re called naive. You know, it used to be applauded when you played the game properly" - Sean Dyche 

I take everything Sean Dyche says with a pinch of salt, largely because I always think he sounds like a club bouncer who has been sent on a management training course, and now speaks in nothing but meaningless platitudes. If you're ever unsure whether a manager is spouting crap, search for the telltale use of the phrase "this football club", as though anyone was ever in doubt which club the manager of the fucking team was actually talking about.

Anyway, the above proclamation is a lovely example of the genre. What on earth is he on about? What does he mean by "the proper way"? Is he now saying there is a proper way to get fouled?

This holier than thou bullshit, so often the default setting of English managers, is tiresome and boring. Foreign players dive, foreign keepers are no good on crosses, foreign managers don't understand the magic of the FA Cup, African players don't like the cold, those players who don't have a "football brain" are, without fail, always black, and so on....these are the glorious stereotypes of English football.

The granddaddy of them all of course, is that English players never dive. They stay on their feet at all times unless fouled, giving managers the lovely little get out whenever there is a contentious decision to let us know that of course it was a foul - "he's English", as though the careers of Michael Owen, Andy Johnson, Ashley Young and Harry Kane et al never happened. Good honest pros. Proper football men. Shoot me now.

I feel a bit sorry for Burnley that their goalkeeper was impeded, but they could always have tried attacking in the first half of this game. And maybe the tortured martyrs act might hold a little more water if Burnley players didn't keel over with imaginary head wounds every time we threatened to break, or they didn't deliberately foul Dimitri Payet every single time he got the ball.

6. The Importance Of Being Idle

In the second half, Andre Ayew entered the fray in place of Manuel Lanzini, who looked suitably miffed at being replaced by a theoretical concept.

I actually thought the Argentinian had disappeared himself in the second half, nullified as he was by our failure to keep passing and instead whack it long to Carroll. He seems to lack the speed to play as a second striker, and the reality is that his best performance of the season came at Spurs when he played in a deep lying central midfield role and was thoroughly excellent. In truth, he should probably be playing in Noble's position and dictating the game from deeper but that doesn't seem to be on the agenda

Thus Ayew came on, and was largely peripheral as he continues to be the man without a position. When one thinks of Ayew it is impossible not to think of Descartes ("If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things) leading me to wonder once again if he actually appeared tonight or if he is simply a latent existential memory of Luis Boa Morte - like those Force ghosts you see in Star Wars. 

"You paid £20m quid for Andre Ayew? Shit a lightsaber"

Ayew did actually skip through in the last few minutes and clearly thought to himself "I can do it!" even as the Universe was saying, "No, Immanuel Kant!" and he skewed it wide and now I can't rid myself of the feeling that he might be Boa Morte Redux. 

Most teams hate the African Cup of Nations as it steals their players, but for us it might be a good chance to get Ayew and Feghouli back on to the pitch and into some form. 

7. Go Let It Out

Imagine booing another person. Standing up (for it seems like a standing activity) and putting your lips together to create the sound “Booooooo”. I have no idea what this is supposed to achieve, when it is done in the context of West Ham fans booing a West Ham player, as happened when Havard Nordtveit came on tonight.

Some fans seem to feel it is their inalienable right to boo players, and I suppose it is, but it doesn't make any sense to me. It is illogical to be unhappy with something and then immediately act in a way that will frequently only make the situation worse. Like standing on a sinking boat, scooping water into the ship and then yelling "Oh my God, things are only getting worse, why does this keep happening!". It's like a Mobius strip of stupidity. 

I vividly recall a Championship game in 2004 against Gillingham when Christian Dailly was booed for much of the first half, which led to a counter faction in the Bobby Moore Lower standing and applauding him in response, and while that was going on Elijah Wood and Charlie Hunnam were in front of me filming their cinematic masterpiece Green Street, just to round out the surreal nature of the day. It was like a battle for the very soul of the Club, but with Andy Hessenthaler instead of God. 

Dailly's crime was to have scored an own goal at Millwall, whilst Nordtveit gave away the last minute penalty at Spurs. Imagine being a new player at a club and conceding a penalty to lose a local derby and then having to sit in a changing room with your new team mates who you barely know, having cost them three points. That's what Nordtveit had to do at Spurs and I suspect it was punishment enough. He then bounced back with an excellent performance at Liverpool, and is showing signs of starting to contribute. 

I have no idea of how anyone thinks booing him is helpful to that cause. 

8. The Shock Of The Lightning

The boos could only really be described as a "smattering", given that most of this game was played out with barely any background noise at all. The Club's official attendance figure of 56,990 can only reflect the tickets sold and not the number of people in the ground, as there were large empty patches everywhere you looked. Let's face it, there will be more atmosphere when I go to see "Rogue One" on Sunday morning with my kids for our family outing that is not-in-any-way-at-the-behest-of-dad. 

The cold doesn't help, nor does the fact this was a midweek game which precludes young children from attending but it's still noticeable that the gaps are opening up. Perhaps it was always likely to be this way, with lots of anecdotal stories that people were abusing the Plus 2 scheme to buy the dirt cheap kid's season tickets for low prices and then upgrading to adult tickets for the big games only, while not bothering to use them at all for games like this. 

I'm not complaining - I attended this game courtesy of this very situation where a friend upgraded his son's seat for me, albeit his son does attend all the weekend games - but as a Claret Member I have certainly noticed that it is getting easier to obtain tickets, even via the impenetrable West Ham Ballot System sponsored by The Da Vinci Code. 

I wonder if there might come a situation at the end of the year whereby the Club review the usage of the kids tickets and try and revoke them for people who haven't used them for children at all? This would create the most West Ham situation ever, where the Club are taking tickets off people at a time they're apparently struggling to fill the stadium. 

What underpins all of this is whether the famous 50,000 waiting list is a real thing or not. I am on it, and am apparently at about number 22,000 in the queue, so I can say with certainty that I think it's pretty reasonable to challenge those season ticket holders who don't go to games, when there are people like me who would willingly take them. The problem with that is that I'm going to the games anyway, so I'm not sure that this solves the attendance issue. 

I would say we're still drawing at least 45,000 home fans each week, and a five game winning streak would push the attendance back up soon enough, so it's only a problem when the team are struggling, but it's hard to see right now why the Club need to expand to 66,000 as they seemingly want to do. 

Maybe there is a reality here that we have a 30,000 core support, and a floating, rotating 25,000 who will come to varying numbers of games through the year. That's fine when the team is going well but when you're losing 5-1 at home to Arsenal and getting played off the pitch by Watford, it becomes far harder to retain that "floating" element. I don't know, but it feels like Karren Brady has the seed of another problem on her hands there. 

9. Stay Young

Mere weeks after I predicted that Reece Oxford was going to leave he signed a new contract today, which can only lead me to conclude that Spurs definitely won't be wound up and liquidated in 2017.

Our record of producing young players in recent years isn't terribly good, despite the Club's Pravda style protestations to the contrary, and it would be marvellous to see him and the likes of Reece Burke, Marcus Browne or Jamal Hector-Ingram make it through. 

Not only is it exciting for the crowd, who love the mythology of the Academy, but it's economically helpful as the more players we graduate from the ranks, the fewer are recruited by David Sullivan. 

Oxford is a great looking prospect, and one who could end up playing plenty this year given the dross in front of him. Kouyate has been dropped to the back three to make up for the lack of a right back, but in theory Oxford could play there and let the Senegalese advance into midfield where he can charge about like a rogue firework and get back to causing havoc in advanced areas. 

Credit to the Club then, for repelling the advances of others and keeping a good young player at West Ham. God knows we need him. 

Reece Oxford, seen here a mere three miles from the touchline

Let this also serve as a reminder that I talk an awful lot of shit, and whilst I want you to read and retweet and share my work, I would also be grateful if you could not remember any of it. 

10. Stop Crying Your Heart Out

This article has been my Vietnam. How do you write a column on West Ham beating Burnley in a shit, boring game where the most noteworthy thing about it was the opposition pretending to have hurt their heads? I've had a two day hangover, spent staring at a blank screen suffering wild fever dreams where Sean Dyche is in a black bomber jacket with a little photo ID on his arm saying "Sorry lads, you can't come in to the football club unless you've got some girls with you.". 

I am done. Here I am hitting "publish" on the keyboard and then realising that I'm going to have to do this again tomorrow for a game against Hull, who are actually worse than Burnley.

Would it be too much to ask for you to shoot me?