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

50. Cambridge United (h) 2-0 : 1992/93 Division 1
(Speedie (47), C Allen (90))

In a tremendously on brand turn of events, West Ham voted for the creation of the Premier League and then promptly got relegated before it could begin. So we begin our list of the best games of the Premier League era in the newly created Division 1. Excellent. 

This was a slightly curious match for me, as I queued for the only time in my life to try and get into the South Bank on the day of its farewell. Perhaps unsurprisingly I was left locked out and ended up following this game through the medium of radio, garbled messages on the Barking Road, crowd noises and quite possibly the TV, but I can't recall exactly. Either way it's one of the few games on here that I didn't see in the flesh. 

With this being the final day of the season we needed a win to secure our promotion to the Premier League  while Cambridge needed a victory to stay up. A nervy first half was helped along by news that promotion rivals Portsmouth were losing to Grimsby and things improved further when David Speedie smashed in a smart opener two minutes after the break. This was a particularly weird plot twist as Speedie may well be the most hated West Ham player of my lifetime. 

A nervy half would follow as Portsmouth took the lead in their game, and Cambridge had a goal narrowly ruled out for offside, but Ian Bishop and Julian Dicks combined to set up Clive Allen for a last minute tap in. By this point the stands were overflowing to the point that fans were simply standing on the touchline and a pitch invasion soon followed. Never has so much Bukta been seen in one place. 

49. Sheffield Wednesday (h) 4-3 : 1999/00 Premier League
(Wanchope (28), Di Canio (62 p), Foe (70), Lampard (76) - Rudi (38), Jonk (48), Booth (66))

When talking about Upton Park on a recent commentary, Gary Neville described it as having a "touch of madness" about it. By the end of the twentieth century, Harry Redknapp had built a team which epitomised this as he seemed to view defending as a sort of optional extra and in 1998/99 fashioned a team which somehow finished fifth in the league with a negative goal difference. That laissez faire approach to defensive organisation tended to lead to thumping away defeats but a succession of utterly crazy home games where no deficit seemed too great to overcome. 

In November 1999, we saw one such barnburner as bottom of the league Sheffield Wednesday rolled into town to face their hated old boy Paolo di Canio, and after 66 minutes were 3-2 up following a fantastic thumping header from Andy Booth. Shortly after, Danny Sonner was sent off for fouling di Canio and within six minutes two goals from Marc Viven-Foe and Frank Lampard had sealed a bonkers win. Wednesday would end up being relegated, which sort of seems fitting if you are so bad that you let Foe score against you. 

These two people do not look like they should be playing a professional sport against each other

48. Wolverhampton Wanderers (h) 3-1 : 1992/93 Division 1
(Morley (58), Dicks (63 p), Holmes (87) - Bull (57))

Sometimes games of football are not about football. In March 1993 Bobby Moore passed away and for the first time in my life I saw collective grief. I still vividly recall the sight of the Upton Park gates being draped with flowers and scarves of all teams, and the pindrop minutes silence before the game as the players gathered around a floral number 6 in the middle of the pitch. This felt like less of a football match and more a kind of communal memorial wake. 

We fell behind to a fabulous goal from Steve Bull, before Trevor Morley equalised almost immediately with a goal that featured Julian Dicks decapitating a man in the buildup. Dicks briefly stopped the Highlander imitations to howitzer home a penalty to give us the lead, before Matt Holmes finished things off with a neatly taken third. I rarely believe in destiny but there are certain games that football teams simply are preordained to win, and this was one.

I think the general tone around Moore has become increasingly mawkish and sentimental but in 1993 there was a genuine and tangible sense of sadness that engulfed the ground that day. It was a fitting way to say goodbye. 

47. Spurs (h) 2-1 : 1998/99 Premier League
(Sinclair (39, 46) - Armstrong (72))

The first of a number of games against Spurs, although there is an argument that this shouldn't make the cut given the utter mediocrity of late 90's Tottenham sides. However, the importance of this result was that it saw us go second in the table as we moved into December. We would promptly drop to sixth by losing 4-0 at Leeds a week later but that's both beside and exactly the point. This was an unusually upwardly mobile side, filled with all the inconsistency of a West Ham Nineties team. 

This match was highlighted by brilliant performances from Eyal Berkovic, who ran rings around a pedestrian Spurs midfield, and Trevor Sinclair who bagged both goals to win the game. The second, in particular, was a fantastic outside of the foot finish as he ran on to an inch perfect through ball from Paul Kitson. 

We may roll our eyes at the continuous playground taunts from our North London friends about these games being our cup finals, but we can't ignore that they just carry a bit more weight than the average London derby. This period marked possibly the only extended time in my fandom where we were clearly better than Spurs. 

46. Manchester United (h)  1-1  : 1994/95 Premier League
(Hughes (31) - McClair (52))

This might well be in the top ten most famous games in Premier League history, but I can't quite bring myself to place it higher given the relative lack of meaning for us. I'd rather celebrate achievements of our own than the failure of others. Still, this was one of those games to tell the grandkids that well, yes, you were there. 

With this being the final game of the season, we went into the match safe from relegation whereas Manchester United needed to win in order to try and snatch the title from Blackburn Rovers. We took a deserved first half lead through a smart Michael Hughes finish, after which things descended into an hourlong attack versus defence exercise which primarily involved Andy Cole wasting gilt edged chances as Ludek Miklosko had the game of his life. 

Paul Ince in a Manchester United shirt!

Brian McClair equalised in the second half but we held on, which was just as well for Blackburn as they had fluffed their lines totally at Anfield and lost 2-1. In the end, a win would have been enough for Alex Ferguson but for the second time in quick succession he was denied at Upton Park, and our reputation as a bellwether away fixture for potential champions was cemented. 

This also had the added effect of denying a league title to hated former player Paul Ince, and cementing one for the popular alumni Tony Gale, which was a nice moment if you are into such things. Which we all undeniably are. 

45. Reading (a) 3-0  : 2007/08 Premier League
(Bellamy (6), Etherington (49, 90))

One of our more curious rivalries that has sprung up in recent years is the one we have with Reading. It stems back to the time we poached Alan Pardew from them, continued as we edged them out of the 2004-05 playoffs, went on through their 6-0 drubbing of us in the dreadful 2006-07 season and then back into the Championship when Jack Collison made himself something of a hero by clobbering Jimmy Kebe after the latter started showboating on yet another a typically dire away day at the Madjeski. 

In the midst of all that came a simultaneous moment of redemption and a glimpse into a future we would never have. Alan Curbishley presided over that 6-0 defeat on New Years Day 2007 and thus will have taken great pleasure in this thumping win just eight months later. 

For the first time, Craig Bellamy started a game alongside Dean Ashton, and the two were soon causing Reading all sorts of problems. Bellamy opened the scoring after just six minutes, and then combined to set up Matthew Etherington for the first of two excellent goals just a minute into the second half. That dream strike pairing looked tremendous and for the first time in years, fans began to ponder what a really good team might look like. Naturally they would start just one more game together before Ashton was lost to injury and Bellamy had agitated his way to Manchester City. But for one glorious afternoon at the Madjeski, we had something to dream on. 

44. Blackburn (h) 2-0 : 1994/95 Premier League
(Rieper (50), Hutchison (83))

Just weeks before denying Manchester United the title, we had chucked a similar spanner in the works of Blackburn Rovers who visited us with an 8 point lead over Manchester United and the title seemingly sewn up. By contrast we were in the bottom four, which was material as this was the season that four teams were to be relegated in order to reduce the Premier League to twenty. 

Although we were unbeaten in six, the congested table and a lack of wins was causing great consternation, particularly with Blackburn, Liverpool and Manchester United still to play. As it was we turned in a fabulous performance and deservedly beat the champions elect. The first goal came from Marc Rieper, recipient of one of my favourite Harry Redknapp quotes ("He's 6"4, speaks perfect English and looks like Superman. We all hate him"), and the game was wrapped up with a late Don Hutchison winner. In between we kept the famous SAS partnership of Shearer and Sutton in check, and made the title race interesting again. Not a bad days work. 

43. Southampton (h) 2-1 : 1996/97 Premier League
(Hughes (73), Dicks (81p) - Heaney (19))

Our 1996/97 season was, by anyone's standards, bonkers. We began with a forward line of Steve Jones and Iain Dowie, cycled through Tony Cottee and Mike Newell, briefly flirted with Florin Raducioiu and Paulo Futre before desperately bringing in John Hartson and Paul Kitson to save the season in February.

And while the campaign is probably best remembered for a typical late season surge to avoid relegation, there was also this insane early season game which might be one of the most purely entertaining matches seen at Upton Park in the twentieth century.  

By August we were something of an oddity in the Premier League as we dabbled with bringing in large numbers of overseas players and briefly earned the nickname of the West Ham United Nations before bigger clubs began to do the same. Against an all British XI from Southampton - albeit one featuring the brilliant Matthew Le Tissier - we turned in a barmy performance that involved us going a goal behind and then simply throwing on attackers until we eventually snatched a late win through Michael Hughes and a Julian Dicks penalty. Francis Benali then added a nicely stereotypical red card to proceedings by attempting to murder Futre in the dying minutes. 

Famous West Ham No 10 Paulo Futre

The highlight of the day was unquestionably seeing Futre briefly conjuring memories of his former self, a brilliant player who joined us far too late in his career to ever be much more than a ghost of the artisan who had graced Europe priorly. By the end of this game we essentially had a two man midfield of Hughes and Danny Williamson, with a forward line of Futre, Ilie Dumitrescu, Florin Raducioiu and Iain Dowie. Can't imagine how we ended up in a relegation battle. 

I've linked to the full, albeit grainy, Match of the Day recap for this one. It's well worth eight minutes of your time.

42. Manchester City (N) 0-3 : 2018/19 Women's FA Cup Final
( - Walsh (52), Stanway (81), Hemp (88))

Sometimes you can win while losing. Not often, but sometimes. This was one such occurrence as the newly professional West Ham Women made a remarkable run to the FA Cup final, before bravely falling to the better funded, better paid and, well, just better Manchester City. 

This should have been the best attended Women's FA Cup Final in history, with two Premier League clubs and one based in London but the FA ended those hopes by scheduling the game on the same Saturday as a full slate of Premier League games. With the the men at home to Southampton, and the Premier League refusing to rearrange the kick off time, the game attracted "only" 43,264 which was a pretty good effort in the circumstances, but a terribly missed opportunity as 50,000 potential fans went to the London Stadium instead of this game. It bemuses me that the authorities still seem to believe that the key to the success of the professional women's game is attracting new fans rather than trying to build on the back of established fanbases. 

West Ham actually had the better of the first half as their psychopathic work rate restricted City admirably, and indeed they should have taken the lead but Jane Ross was denied by a smart save from Karen Bardsley with a point blank header. They faded badly in the second half, however, although conceding two in the last nine minutes put an unfairly one sided slant to the result. 

But, in the wider scheme of things, this wasn't so much about the outcome but the simple fact that women were able to represent West Ham at Wembley. After decades of male oppression, to hear "Bubbles" ring around the national stadium while eleven women wore our colours with distinction felt like a seismic moment. To have been able to witness it with my daughter made it even more special. Watching players like Claire Rafferty, Adriana Leon, Kate Longhurst and Gilly Rafferty run themselves into the ground for our club - her club - was something worth waiting a long time to see. 

41. Leicester (h) 4-3 : 1997/98 Premier League
(Lampard (15), Abou (31, 74), Sinclair (65) - Cottee (59, 83), Heskey (66))

I don't think it's all that much of a surprise that a large number of these games take place on the final day of the season, when our tremendously "ahfuckit" approach to defending really comes into its own. 

This was an absurd game, that could as easily have taken place on a school playground as a Premier League pitch. Both teams entered the day with an outside shot at qualifying for Europe which was a pretty good achievement as we couldn't even get a sponsor in those days. 

We raced out into a two goal lead with excellent strikes from Frank Lampard and Samassi Abou, before Tony Cottee dragged Leicester back into it with a smart finish. Trevor Sinclair and Emile Heskey then exchanged goals before Abou seemingly sealed it with another fine finish. However, Cottee popped up with another late strike to leave us all squirming for the final ten minutes as Leicester employed a Rush Goalie and we tried out the hitherto alien concept of trying to stop them scoring. 

We finished the season in eighth position, albeit we should really have finished higher but for a disastrous end to the campaign, which saw us win just two of our final eight fixtures. Looking back I don't think we ever really got over the disappointment of losing two cup quarter finals to Arsenal in the same season, including an FA Cup penalty shoot out that was apparently scripted by Morrisey. 

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 (10 - 1)

Leicester 0 - 2 West Ham (And Other Ramblings)

"Come on, come on, and dance all night

Despite the heat it'll be alright"

- The Lovin' Spoonful, "Summer in the City"

Thank fuck for that.

West Ham 1 - 1 Leicester City (And Other Ramblings)

"Maybe there's a God above

But all I've ever learned from love

Is how to shoot somebody who outdrew ya"

- Leonard Cohen, "Hallelujah"

It's a start. A stuttering, hesitant, uncertain start. Three months late, of course, but still a start. Akin to watching new born foals emerge blinking into a copse through the morning dew, and taking their first tentative steps into a brave new world. While 50,000 people scream "Could someone just fucking mark Jamie Vardy!" at them.

But still, a start. A punch thrown back. We at last got off a shot at the duel. It's a building block.

If they don't run, they don't play

I watched this one from the comfort of my front room, as I couldn't make it in person, meaning I had to turn down an invitation from Sky Sports to take part in a pitchside discussion before the game.  That conversation focused on the current unrest and while I wasn't able to launch a 45 minute rant about the lack of a competent Director of Football, Dan Silver did a much better job by simply laying out the facts of the stadium move and the unfulfilled promise that underpinned the whole thing. "I don't see West Ham as a Champions League team" said Jamie Carragher, reasonably. "Well, neither do we, but they brought us here and told us we would be, so everything has to be viewed through that prism" countered Dan, equally reasonably. Amen. A job well done. And fair play to Sky for asking the questions too. And while I'm here I should add that their football coverage would be about 800% better if every match was covered by Kelly Cates, Gary Neville and Carragher. 

***

"Don't wanna let you down, 

I've been lucky, I was lost, but now I'm found"

- Embrace, "My Weakness Is None Of Your Business"

But pre match discussions do not Premier League points win. That was still to come, in a game that ranged from tepid to thunderous and took a swift detour via frenetic as well. The atmosphere before the match was so thick with poison and rancour that Sky featured it heavily in their build up, with Neville wandering around outside taking the temperature of fans in an attempt to gauge exactly how toxic it was all likely to become. 

Much of the pre match analysis focused on the importance of not allowing Leicester to score early, meaning that they naturally took the lead after 8 minutes. This was so predictable that it didn't really engender the kind of rage that people were concerned about, but instead rolled over the crowd like a gentle wave on to a shoreline. C'est la vie, seemingly, and given it's the fourth time already this year that we've gone behind inside eleven minutes, I guess it is.  

It was yet another goal fashioned from our leaky right hand side, as Pablo Zabaleta was drawn infield in an attempt to win the ball and start a counter attack as though he were playing for a much better side. I don't know how much longer the Argentine is going to keep confusing Andy Carroll with Sergio Aguero but I think we'd all benefit from him wising up a little. As it was, Vardy drifted into the vacant space and a speculative cross was adroitly slotted home by Marc Albrighton. Angelo Ogbonna should have blocked the cross but whoever was holding his voodoo likeness at that particular moment had twisted his legs around so they didn't work and we were behind again. 

This pattern would continue for much of the half, as Leicester took advantage of our defensive fragility without really fashioning any chances. They should, however, have had a penalty when Arthur Masuaku went full Ogbonna and brought down Albrighton. I'm pretty sure that the only reason referee Martin Atkinson didn't award that one was out of pity. 

At that point, West Ham had been largely poor, playing as they were with the weight of a fear so obvious it was almost visible to the naked eye. Our passing was tentative and our movement was obvious, leading to a feeling of frustration inside the Thunderdome. It's easy to think that players don't care, but relegation means upheaval for them too. Some go on to better paying deals elsewhere, but plenty don't. Some have to give up football altogether and move to places like West Brom or Sunderland to get a new contract. Kids have to leave their schools, houses have to be sold, maybe whole families have to leave the country. On nights like this one, it was easy to see the nervousness and tension and that was only heightened by our early setback.

If ever the fans were going to turn, it was now. 

***

"Maybe then I'll fade away and not have to face the facts

It's not easy facing up when your whole world is black"

- The Rolling Stones, "Paint It Black"

And then they didn't. On the face of it, applauding football fans for not turning on their own team seems like the faintest of faint praise, but there was something worth acknowledging here. This entire week was coloured for fans by the discussion of protest. At this point, there are a number of groups and viewpoints, all seemingly united in their distrust of our Board and all determined to be heard. The media had picked up on this, and so had the Leicester players with Danny Simpson openly stating that a tactic would be to try and turn the fans on the team. 

It is a sad truth that opposition teams have been doing this to West Ham for years with some success, and you could hardly blame Simpson for saying it, galling as it was. Maybe some Hammers were galvanised to prove those people wrong, maybe some were harnessing the spirit of anger into something positive and maybe some had just been drinking since midday and were determined to enjoy their Friday night. Either way, there was an undeniably uplifting effect as the crowd united squarely behind the team and finally generated some atmosphere in the great vacuum of the London Stadium. For what it's worth, it made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up to hear and see our fans doing what I always believed as a kid we were preternaturally brilliant at doing - connecting with, and lifting up our team, from nothing. Thank you to those who were there. We'll always have Leicester. 

And so it was that Cheikhou Kouyate scrambled home a goal from a Manuel Lanzini corner right on the stroke of halftime and soothed the fraying nerves of the masses, even if the visitors had effectively ceased to be an attacking threat at this point. 

Once again, xG suggests that this was a poor game with few real chances, and I'd agree, but there is something to be said for keeping Leicester this quiet. They are a decent team who are probably better than their league position suggests, and we were marginally better than them here as we went on to dominate the second half, without creating the killer chance that would have won us the game. On another night, with better luck in front of goal we might have fashioned a winner to have illuminated the gloom and cut through the icy East London night. If nothing else, we might have been awarded a dodgy penalty ourselves when Andre Ayew fell under the lightest of touches from Harry Maguire. It wouldn't have been fair, but I think we're past caring about that now.

And so we take the point, and move on to Everton for a game where we should have a great chance given their inherent shittiness, lack of a manager, lower recovery time and the fact that we have their returning manager. We also desperately need to win given our upcoming fixtures. But you've all been around long enough to know how this particular episode will end. So while a point isn't bad, it's also not good. We really could have used this win. 

***

"Get high up on the mountain, feel your lungs start burning as you rise

Sometimes when you get to this height, you will see another hill to climb

But sometimes all you can see, is the road you didn't take"

- Stornoway, "The Road You Didn't Take"

So what are we to make of a draw like this? It's an inbetweener of an outcome that neither disheartens nor satisfies. It's a Big Mac of a result is what it is.

On the face of it, we have to be happy with a point in the face of a decent opposition and such terrible form coming into the game. I think this was probably our best performance of the season, which is kind of like saying Gary Barlow was the best one in Take That. It might be true, but that doesn't mean there's any quality involved.

But it's also true that we needed a win. With this draw and their own late win, Palace have pulled to within two points of us despite making the worst start to an English top flight league season by losing their first six games without scoring. They could be above us by the time you read this.

But taking the performance in isolation there were some things to be pleased about. The team worked hard, with a clearer defensive structure and a definite plan to get wide and bombard the visitors with crosses. I don't much rate that as an offensive tactic, but I'll accept that it's better then smashing it in the general direction of Chicharito and then whipping out the rosary beads.

Elsewhere, Marko Arnautovic seemed to work pretty hard and was a willing outlet on the right, while the likes of Obiang and Cresswell recovered from poor starts to gradually grow into the contest. These were baby steps but we at least looked like a professional team rather than the playground rabble we've been resembling for the last few months. Ironically, the best bit of defending all night came when Arnautovic chased down Vardy after another of Zabaleta's magical mystery tours. If Moyes can extract that kind of attitude on a permanent basis from the squad then it will speak well of what he and his staff are getting across on the training ground. Caveat emptor, however - the view from Shark Towers might not have allowed me the full range of vision to truly assess whether our artists were truly turning into artisans, but it looked acceptable on the telly.

There was some guile among the sweat too, as Arthur Masuaku played in midfield and oscillated wildly between dazzling breaks and strolling around like he was in an art gallery. He has a lovely ability to retain possession under pressure, and as a result has the priceless ability to carry the ball from midfield areas to the final third. Too often that merely ended up with Lanzini or Creswell swinging an aimless cross towards the distant Carroll, but it was, yes, a start. 

West Ham break down the right

Watching all those crosses go begging did rather put me in mind of the famous failure Moyes suffered at Manchester United, when his team swung in over 80 crosses during a game with Fulham and managed only a draw. I've written and shared links previously about the inefficiency of crossing as a way of scoring goals and I know not all of you agree, but this seemed like a pretty good example of the point. We put in 31 crosses, with just 5 being successful, one of which led to Kouyate's goal. I suppose the fact that we scored from one might make it odd that I am decrying the tactic, but over 90 minutes of huffing and puffing I found it disheartening to see this being used as our main attacking weapon. As a short term fix I can see the attraction due to the simplicity, but I struggle to see this kind of approach worrying better teams who will have so much more possession than us.

As a tactic it was a bit like watching a Roman Testudo formation being used to storm a Normandy beach. It is organised, with clear planning and you can see the thinking, but nobody does this anymore. It's a relic of a distant past when it made sense to get the ball wide because football was played on terrible pitches and the only parts of the ground not under water were the wings.

In examining this I did a quick check on SofaScore to see what the best teams around were doing in this regard. Close to home, Leicester put in 18 crosses and scored with the only successful one. Further up the league the numbers were as follows:

Crosses

Man City -17
Arsenal - 19
Liverpool - 18
Chelsea - 26
Spurs - 35

Now as a study that's pretty useless but I found it interesting that the only good team who outcrossed us were Spurs who were desperately chasing the points against a West Brom side set up to force you to do this by playing 8 centre halves and pushing you out wide. I should also note that they only drew. As did Chelsea, another team chasing the game.

None of this is definitive, and it's just an opinion, but I have a feeling that a season of this might give us an illusory sense of dominance in certain games, but it's a hard way to score goals.

***

"Watch it all go down, like a stone in a stream

If you fall for your reflection, you will drown in a dream"

- First Aid Kit, "King of the World"

And I think there's a specific reason for that at West Ham. 

We need to talk about Andy. Big Andy. The pissed Geordie Samurai who hasn't really looked like Andy for quite a while now. Perhaps the cumulative effect of all those injuries was always going to result in him losing a step, or maybe he's just stumbled off another barstool, but he looks lost as a player. When I think of Carroll at the moment the most useful part of his game seems to be his defensive presence at set pieces. Not quite what we were expecting for £100,000 a week. 

Steamin'

His essence was magnificently captured by Barney Ronay in The Guardian after the game. He wrote:

"Carroll does not play football. He inflicts it. He wreaks football...appearing dramatically in the centre of things like the fuselage of a burning Messerschmitt tumbling from the skies"  

And now I want to give up writing because I'll never produce anything that good.

But at some point Moyes will surely need to cut the cord with Carroll. There has long been this feeling that there was a way of playing that suited him, that simply eluded us, or which Bilic refused to play due to our status as footballing puritans. At what point do we accept the alternative truth, which is that he is a man out of his time, whereby no modern, progressive manager can play to his strengths because battering goalkeepers into the net while they hold the ball ceased to be legal about the same time as slavery? Carroll is a footballing Siren, calling managers to him with the wild eyed promise of a rampaging centre forward, and then wrecking them upon the rocks of his slow link play and faltering aerial power.

The thing that I notice most about him nowadays is how rarely he seems to do the things that we all think he is good at. Where have the towering headers gone? Whither his physical dominance? Morgan and Maguire handled him so well on Friday that as cross after cross rained down like fireballs over the castle walls, by the end he wasn't even trying to head them, instead lining up speculative volleys. Whatever the faults of Diafra Sakho, I struggle to see how he would be a worse option than this, and he certainly should be getting more than two minutes at the end of games to show his worth.

Perhaps Carroll will run riot at Everton and force me to eat my words, and I happen to think his hold up play remains pretty decent but a team with our problems needs more than that. On occasion we need a central striker who can run in behind, or run into channels to win or retain the ball high up the pitch. I'm not tactical genius, but I can see that Carroll is incapable of this, meaning his entire output at the moment seems to be taking the ball just inside the opposition half with his back to goal and a five man midfield staring at him dolefully. It's perhaps little wonder that he hasn't scored since April.

In an ideal world I guess you would want our wide players to run past him and feed off him, but we have no pace out there so they struggle to get beyond him and as a result he gets caught trying to bring the ball down while outnumbered, and then just ends up getting frustrated. I'd also say that his aerial threat has been effectively neutered by the red card at Burnley and the elbow that slipped the net at Watford.

I feel sorry for him, in so much as I don't think this is all his fault. He's just an electric guitar in a symphony orchestra. It could work, I suppose, but I don't see how. But if the Moyes predilection for playing Carroll and Kouyate as our most advanced attackers and smashing endless streams of crosses at them continues, then I could easily see the Geordie talisman falling out with the crowd again.

***

"Yeah, said it's alright, I won't forget

All the times I've waited patiently for you

And you'll do just what you choose to do"

- Love, "Alone Again Or"

Which brings me back to the crowd and the off the field adventures almost as though I had planned it.  I wrote before the last game that I was greatly concerned about the prospect of open revolution in the ground, not because of any great love for the Board, but simply because fans can't just switch effortlessly between spewing vitriol at the Director's Box and then encouraging the team. As it transpired, the support was excellent and if that continues for a while then I think the chances of the team hauling us away from this current mess greatly improves.

Let me guess...he wants a Director of Football

But that hasn't stopped thing progressing apace off the pitch. I implored you all to join WHUISA last time out as I think that proper engagement with the club is important and doing it through a democratically elected group is the way forward. At present their membership stands at 800, which is impressive in a short space of time but needs to continue climbing up into the tens of thousands to truly give the committee the heft they need to press the issues they need to press. They are meeting with the club on 30 November and you can contribute to the discussion around agenda items here.

However, other groups are also in dialogue with the club, including the Real West Ham Fans group who are due to meet with members of the Board next week. This was a group created by Andy Swallow and attracted over 7,000 members in just a couple of days. I have no affiliation with them, but a couple of people I know have suggested it's the real deal and that the group will be an effective rallying point for dialogue with the Board, and will coordinate their efforts with WHUISA.

Their current request is for people to suggest five topics for them to take into the meeting, and as such I thought I'd have a go at sketching out some ideas for discussion. My self imposed rules were that it had to be a realistic area for dialogue (selling up is not a realistic request, nor apparently is demanding Westfield treat us like humans) and should be reasonably broad in nature so as to both facilitate discussion and also try and reflect what I think are concerns from the wider fanbase.

To the extent I get anything factually wrong here, please tell me and I'll update. 

1. The Stadium

We need to a have a frank discussion about the stadium that can't simply be based on the premise that the move was a rip-roaring success and that some arbitrary percentage of fans plucked from nowhere are happy with it. I think there are some very specific things about attending matches that others can comment upon, but I think there is a simple truth that a lot of fans who have to sit behind the gangways feel like they are a hell of a lot further from the action than they were at Upton Park. Offering to relocate people is fine, but the general trend seems to have been to move down closer to the pitch and I'm guessing that eventually these seats will become like gold dust.

So can the club please explain their plan to install the retractable seating originally promised, with a particular focus on their plan to install seating that can be retracted rather than dismantled, ensuring that we never again have to start the season with three away games in order to accommodate a minority sport that doesn't contribute to the upkeep of the stadium.

2. The Finances

My understanding of the terms of our lease are that we could not have any external debt at the time of our move, meaning that the owners were forced to make loans to the club. Unlike, say, Stoke where the Coates family have done this at a zero percent rate of interest, the club is paying between six and seven percent at present to our owners.

Whilst I am not necessarily suggesting that the loans should be at nil rates, it does not sit comfortably with the owners desire to project themselves as owner-fans when they are charging the club a rate of interest similar to that paid by other clubs to external lenders. Why do the owners feel this rate of interest is appropriate and would they consider lowering the rate in order to free up more cash for the club? As they seemingly value the club at over £600m, this would be a relatively small sum for them to give up each year prior to a sale, but impactful to the club given our small net spend this season.

3. The Fans

How can the Club justify not taking up a full allocation of away tickets to away games, including a League Cup quarter final at Arsenal? It's outrageous...but (*).

(*) The Club have ceded on this one today, so I've deleted my main diatribe on the topic. This gives me the pleasing sense of having achieved something.

4. The Academy

West Ham's academy is not functioning at a level commensurate with our status or needs. Chelsea, Arsenal and Spurs are producing Premier League players at a rate far beyond us, and in doing so have an income stream that is not open to us.

Put simply, what are the club proposing to do about it?

5. The Team

Ah yes. The area where I'm most likely to fall foul of my own rules.

Well, the team is mediocre and has been for a number of years. Since taking over the club and appointing himself Director of Football, David Sullivan has presided over a relegation, a promotion and a succession of bottom half finishes. The exception to this was 2015/16 when we finished 7th. Leicester won the league that year. We have had one semi final appearance in the League Cup where Man City scraped past us 9-0 on aggregate.

During that same time our transfer activity has been dubious at best, with barely anything recovered from external sales relative to our outgoings. Our largest sale was when Dimitri Payet left the club six months after his triumphant Euro 2016 campaign. We received less for him that Newcastle received for Moussa Sissoko the year before. The last four transfer windows have been unsuccessful.

We have employed four managers in that seven year span, with the Board's first choices rejecting the job on each occasion. We are currently employing a manager on a short term deal to try and keep us up, and as I write this we sit in the relegation zone.

The club currently have a higher wage bill than Dortmund, Valencia, Inter and Roma. The chairman was so delighted about this that he tweeted it out to all of us. I am assuming that someone on the Board actually realises that paying lots of money to be average is a bad thing but, at this stage, who knows.

So, my question is straightforward. We have changed the manager, the players, the scouts and the coaches. At this point the only person to have retained their position in this structure for the last seven years is our Director of Football. So, can we have a new one please?

Please feel free to add your own comments below, or perhaps better yet, tell the organisations directly. I'm not entirely sure I fully understand all that is happening with the Board, and truthfully think their desire for approval is really a weakness, but it is what it is and I'm happy to stick my two penneth worth in. Don't be shy of doing the same. 

West Ham 2 - 3 Leicester (And Other Ramblings)

1. A New England

I feel like I just watched the physical manifestation of Brexit. 

With our stadium move loosely mirroring the country's exit from the EU, everybody has split down the middle on its merits and division is everywhere as we wait to see if it was worth the pain. 

It began with hope and ambition, with dreams of a future that would surpass our history and allow us to move past our self imposed shackles to a bright new daydream. It might still happen, but I'm rather concerned that whatever gains there are may be illusory. 

For sadly, reality is a cruel mistress and many a harsh lesson has been learned when real life intersects with fantasy. On this drizzly, grey day where it all continued to go wrong, I sat in our new home and pondered our recent history and the present that was unfurling below me with predictable grimness. This was supposed to be glorious and easy. Perhaps we should have built a yacht to show Leicester how powerful we really are. 

Somehow, in my little corner of the cyber world Jamie Vardy has become synonymous with Article 50. For Brexiteers I think he might represent the kind of meteoric rise to glory that they themselves are shooting for, while for Remainers I think it's just that he's apparently a thick racist, which seems to be the lazy default position of the liberal press on Leave voters. 

I'm mostly puzzled at why an England centre forward who has scored fewer goals this season than West Brom's central defence would be quite so keen to taunt opposition fans, but perhaps I'm misunderstanding his "fairytale". In the end, this might have been the worst 90 minutes entertainment you will ever see, or at least will be until they release the Vardy film. Don't forget the diving, guys!

Jamie Vardy. A prick. 

But on this day, like so many others lately, we were destined to be on the wrong end of this shit. Slaven Bilic patrolled the sideline like our very own David Davis. "I haven't done any modelling on the impact of playing all my players out of position, but I don't need to. I just know it's going to be fine". Experts be damned - in went Kouyate at centre half to replace the injured Reid and no amount of head holding in the stands was going to change his mind.

High up above him, miles from the action, unelected and unloved, sat our very own Theresa May - David Sullivan - presumably wondering how everything had turned to disaster quite so quickly. After all, lots of clever people keep telling him it's all going extremely well. 

It's not a perfect metaphor, of course. Nobody voted for West Ham to move, and none of our counterparts have even the slightest interest in making it work. In both cases I can see the destination, but have no confidence in the ability of the people leading the way. These are chilling times for those of us looking up the road ahead.

But if I squint I can at least see the thinking. In both cases people really believed that this violent separation from history was necessary to improve our situation. Fair enough, but the problem is that when it looks like all you've done is take a hugely circuitous route to get back where you started...well, that just seems like a massive waste of time. 

2. Accident Waiting To Happen

I had every intention of making this piece entirely positive. I appreciate it's tough for you all to read the same match report week after week - "West Ham played without a right back and conceded early, sort of got back into it, Andre Ayew scored, Manuel Lanzini was great - wish we played him in his best position - better luck next time" - but hopefully you'll appreciate that it's even tougher to write it. 

I was done with that then. This was going to be ten positive points. Or as near to ten as I could muster, and then possibly Frasier quotes for the rest. 

And yet, somehow we found new and inventive ways to be bad. 

Worry not, Sam Byram started at right back and played pretty well. None of the goals were obviously his fault, and he attacked with plenty of verve and purpose. This counts as a huge positive in the world of West Ham fullbackery.

In fact, Byram looked far more dangerous than his winger Robert Snodgrass, who appears to have forgotten how to use his feet, and his left sided counterpart Aaron Cresswell, who seems to have forgotten that he has feet at all. The latter was eventually replaced by Arthur Masuaku, which is a bit like when they made Basic Instinct 2 and got Stan Collymore involved for reasons nobody has ever quite fathomed. 

@11tegen11 shows yet again how reliant we are upon Lanzini, who was at the heart of everything good that we did in this game, and whose wonderful free kick pulled us back into things after a dire opening saw us two down after seven minutes. And that despite David Sullivan telling them that they needed to stop conceding early and everything. 

Riyad Mahrez opened it up with a cross that accidentally went in. It could have been genius, but it was probably luck. Leicester, ladies and gentleman! In an ideal world Darren Randoph would have saved it, but he tends to save everything he should and nothing he shouldn't and thus it flew in and we were behind again. 

The second was a mixture of a nicely worked free kick and the sort of defensive display that one normally associates with Star Wars stormtroopers. I have watched it back and I have no idea what the West Ham players are doing. Leicester's little routine involved Mahrez and Albrighton shifting the free kick slightly, during which two second pause our players went absolutely mental and came wandering out of the box like zombies from The Walking Dead. When the ball eventually made it's way into the box it found an unmarked Robert Huth, who has exactly one footballing skill - heading footballs - and he made it two. I'm pretty sure we signed Jose Fonte to stop this kind of thing. 

After Lanzini's goal briefly gave us hope, Vardy pounced on yet another loose ball from a corner to add a third, and made it 103 goals conceded in Bilic's 67 league games in charge. And Dimitri Payet said we were too defensive. 

The bonkers reality is that even at 3-1 down we should have won this game. Andre Ayew got our second with a header from a corner routine that was so lame I had to blink twice to convince myself it wasn't us defending. Thereafter we rained efforts on the Leicester goal and only a combination of Kasper Schmeichel's excellence and incredible luck (Leicester, ladies and gentleman!) kept us out. 

Carroll alone had two great chances and both Ayew and Kouyate should have scored too. In fact, this really should have been the first truly great game at the London Stadium, but we blew our lines and proved yet again that no amount of attacking brio can make up for a defence this porous.

3. Days Like These

I don't go to games any more looking for victory, but instead I look for victories. Little ones, mostly. Can we get through without injuries? "Be not deceived: God is not mocked" says the Bible on that front, and sure enough this game saw us lose Reid, Antonio and Obiang for extended periods. At this point I'm pretty sure the Hull team talk in two weeks won't amount to much more than just "kick Lanzini". 

But more prosaically, what can we learn about certain players? Does Byram have a future here? Who has regained form? From where is hope going to spring as we limp in an ever more bedraggled fashion towards the mythical 40 point mark?

It's hard to gauge any of these things at present, as the team is just so disjointed. We fought back well here, and with great spirit, but it would take a peculiar type of myopia to overlook the disastrous defending. There is no getting away from the fact that we are an awful defensive side, as we boast the fourth worst goals against record in the league and for all the spirit we showed in the second half, it sure would be nice to avoid going behind early and having to chase games constantly. If nothing else, we aren't going to run into opponents like Leicester every week who are knackered after their midweek exertions in the Champions League. 

And so we sit, nine points off the bottom three, no wins in five, one win at home since December and no obvious help on the way. God's little joke at my attempts to be positive. 

Let me say now that I don't think we're going down. In fairness, the lads seem to be giving it a bloody good try but there are probably just too many bad teams around who have too much ground to make up. But with three new, long to medium term injuries - I know this because the details were tweeted out by the Chairman's teenage son, just like Bayern Munich do it - we face a tough few weeks to avoid getting dragged into a relegation fight in the manner of an errant two year old interrupting her fathers' BBC interview. 

4. Train, Train

There was an odd little sideshow this week when Jaap Stam and Reece Oxford joined the list of people to have decried our training as lacking intensity. They joined Enner Valencia, Simone Zaza and, weirdly, Bilic himself in questioning what is happening at our new Rush Green training ground. 

Now, the first thing I would do is to immediately discount anything said by another manager. They are all champion bullshitters who will say anything to help their own job security. Ever noticed how when a new manager takes over he immediately tells the world the players aren't fit enough? It's all part of the same trick to convince fans that any short term failure is not his fault and to send a message to the board that any success is his. When Stam talks about our training he's really saying to his bosses that he is better than a Premiership manager. That's his prerogative of course, but hopefully he gets a nice digital wanker sign next time he calls up looking for help. 

As for the rest? Well, I don't even really know what intensity means in this context. The training seemed fine last year, even if we were going behind too frequently then as well, and these are players who weren't getting in the team, which is also a point to consider. 

In general, though, I suppose it's impossible to say that our training has been adequate when the team are performing so poorly on the pitch. Whereas last year we seemed able to implement a high pressing game both tactically and physically, we seem incapable of either this time around. In fairness it didn't help that the game on Saturday was cynically and persistently slowed down by Leicester, in a style to make Tony Pulis weep with joy. 

Time after time Schmeichel kicked his studs against the posts and substituted players left the field with all the speed of teenagers at a zebra crossing. It was painful, and enough to drive me apoplectic except that nobody around me seemed to notice. At one point, only my small child next to me seemed to be able to hear me whinging, leading me to wonder if perhaps I was in The Sixth Sense, albeit with the big twist being that Havard Nordtveit is actually dead. 

I see dead people - OK, can any of them play right back?

Like many, I was quick to jump on the intensity and training bandwagon but in the end it's all a distraction. The only thing that matters is how the team play and the results they get. If our players can't press and harry like Liverpool or Spurs it's probably because they aren't as good or as athletic as them. Look at the way Byram visibly ran out of puff here after 70 minutes, or the way that Carroll loped around like a pissed Geordie Geisha at midnight in Bigg Market for most of the game. 

Maybe that's a lack of conditioning or maybe they just can't compete with Lallana or Alli on those terms. I don't know the answer but it feels like a cop out to simply say that training isn't intense enough. Maybe the answer has been staring us in the face for quite a while, and we just don't want to accept it because to admit it would be too painful. But maybe. Maybe we're just not.....very good?

5. Waiting For The Great Leap Forwards

So what of Bilic? For the first time there seem to be a few ripples around the fanbase as people begin to divide upon pro and anti Slav lines, with the only comfort for him being that even if the crowd did turn on him, he’d be too far away from them to hear the boos anyway.

To get our message across we’d really need some planes trailing banners behind them, one saying “Enough – Slav Out!” and then a second saying “In Slav we Trust” and then finally a third one with “I’m not too fussed really as I think it’s quite hard to determine how much we should blame the board and how much we should blame the manager”.

My take last week is that I wouldn’t fire Bilic as the board can’t be trusted to replace him. This is a cop out, as it doesn't really answer the question of whether I think Bilic is up to it. As my wife will attest as she looks fondly at the family sized bag of Minstrels that she got for Valentines Day - I am a romantic. Last year happened, and I can't seem to let it go. Bilic produced a team with a swagger and a belief and I feel like I waited thirty years for that. So I am prepared to give him time, with the, frankly terrifying, acknowledgement that another summer of transfers like this one will probably see us relegated.

Of course, the murkiness comes in trying to establish why that fell away this year. How much should we blame Payet, the new stadium, injuries, bad luck, the terrible business by the board or the terrible business by Bilic? 

My conclusion is that the answer is a little bit of all of the above, and at least a couple of those shouldn't be factors next year. I see Bilic on a short leash though. This board have a pathological desire to be seen to be doing something - hence we get Monday morning apology emails from the Chairman - and if next season starts like this one, then I wouldn't be surprised to see Bilic gone. And then the white knuckle ride begins all over again. 

***

OK - let's be positive for a second. After all, how hard can it be - someone once heard the demo of this and decided to release it anyway. And charged money for it.

Seriously, please listen to this. It is amazing.

So, in the spirit of Vanilla and looking for the positives where there are none. What reasons do we all have for optimism?

6. God's Footballer

Manuel Lanzini and Michail Antonio play for us

For the first time in a long while we have young talent to build around. Lanzini and Antonio are both high class performers, in their twenties and signed to long term deals. One might also add Pedro Obiang, Aaron Cresswell, Cheikhou Kouyate, Andre Ayew and Winston Reid to that same bracket although I think they might each be slightly lower down the talent table.

I've excluded Carroll and Sakho from this list as I'm trying to highlight the players who don't have their own private MRI machines at home.

Around this core must be built a young, mobile, pacey side who can get back to being competitive with the top six in English football. It might feel like a flimsy base to start from, but somebody once took two empty loo rolls, glued cotton wool to them, painted them brown and sold them for £100 a pop as UGG boots. Anything is possible with the right people making the decisions and significant amounts of luck - just ask Leicester City and Toby Young. 

Please be like Payet, but don't be like Payet in absolutely every way

How far are we from being a good side? It's really very hard to tell. We probably need a goalkeeper, and whilst Byram might yet emerge, a right back seems essential. A striker has been on the agenda for years, and despite (or because of) the joke January window we still need a centre half and a creative player to share the burden with Lanzini. 

All of this relies very heavily on large amounts of money being made available to spend and a robust, perceptive policy for choosing the players. Which brings me to....

7. Sugardaddy

We are owned by David Sullivan and David Gold

By now, you're probably thinking that the PTSD caused by Huth scoring has seeped into my writing. But here's the thing: have you been watching events at Leyton Orient? Or Leeds, or Cardiff or Hull? Bad owners never ever equal successful teams. It's why Ken Bates is so popular everywhere in the country outside Chelsea and Leeds. 

Sullivan and Gold are far from perfect owners, and I've said so many times previously. But they are deeply attached to the Club. And I see them in two very distinctly separate lights: the first as off the field movers and secondly as they pertain to the team itself.

I don't really see how people can be unhappy at them taking over from the Icelandics. They have real money for a start. By which I mean legal tender, and not something they got out of a Scandanavian Monopoly box. They have also been prepared to spend that money, often unwisely but I don't feel like they've skimped on their outlay - it's just that they rely too heavily on Sullivan's web of agents and South American fetish.

Many are unhappy that Sullivan and Gold charge interest on their loans to us, seemingly unaware that owing money to your chairmen is a very different kettle of fish to being in hock to a bank. If you wish we were owned by Roman Abramovich then that's something else entirely, although maybe check out where he got his money from before you eulogise his largesse unduly. 

I understand the high emotions around the stadium and for some that is a bridge too far. For me, I wish they'd assume a lower profile, keep the kids off Twitter and take several steps back from the media. But weighing it all up, there is an underlying ambition to their ownership that was never present in my childhood. Back in the days of the Cearns family, the only ambition was to survive, and we have gone past that now. Even if you think they are only after success to line their own pockets, then I'm still not sure what the problem is? It all ends with West Ham doing well. 

On the flipside, they need to step away from the team as soon as possible. I understand the desire - they've spent their entire lives being successful off their own backs, and the cold reality is that I strongly doubt anyone is ever going to tell them that they aren't especially good at being Directors of Football. Self awareness and booming self confidence rarely go hand in hand at that level of business. 

But if they would just get out of their own way, continue to spend appropriately but hand the reigns over to someone who knew what they were doing, then that might just be the making of the Club. And if they don't want to do that, well, we've never been a sexier purchase then we are right now. We have manageable debt, a cushy stadium deal, a huge fanbase and we aren't successful so there's no premium to pay. Excuse while I keep making eyes at the Qataris....

8. Moving The Goalposts

We have Karren Brady

Again, I can hear some coffee being spluttered, but here's a question for you. Who is the most prominent woman in British football? And who is the most prominent woman in British business? I would argue that the answer to both those questions is our Vice Chair. She works for West Ham, is wildly popular around the country as she pulls faces on The Apprentice when some candidate asks "Do French people love their children?" and is a vocal and articulate advocate of women in business. How could this not be a positive thing for the Club?

I am proud that we brought Clyde Best to the UK when it was social anathema to do so (and we should memorialise that more), and whilst the two situations aren't equivalent I think it's brilliant that we now have a woman so visible and competent at the helm of the Club. I love that my daughters have someone at their Club they can look up to and not simply see a wall of middle aged white men staring back at them.

For some fans I know that there is simply no way they will ever accept this, and the air of latent misogyny that often surrounds that analysis is something I just can't be bothered to get into. It's like Eighties music - you can play it, but I don't have to listen.

Of course she has made errors like the Plus Two scheme and I wish she'd just ignore Spurs in her Sun column, but by and large I see nothing but progress off the pitch. Brady never chose to move us to the Olympic Stadium, but when she was tasked with doing so she secured a deal so good that other fans hate us for it. I prefer that to when they all called us their second team because they used to beat us while we played pretty football.

Our third choice right back too, probably

Of course the running track is a killer, but that's the price that had to be paid. Too steep for some, I know, but that was the cost of doing business. Without it, we'd still be at Upton Park and whether people want to accept it or not, significantly less well placed to progress. 

Brady has helped to put the base blocks in place and the hope is that one day there will be sufficient brainpower in the Boardroom to build upon them. For now, we should savour the fact that the commercial and administrative side of the Club seems to be blossoming nicely and try to forget all about the time we missed out on a semi final because we brought on a player who had already appeared in the competition. 

9. Somedays I See The Point

We're crap.

Not an immediately obvious cause for optimism, I grant you, but bear with me. Like Season 2 of Heroes this could be fucking terrible, but you've already started so you might as well finish.

We do not have a very good team or squad. And yet, there we sit in the middle of the Premier League. Despite our disastrous form in the new ground, a transfer policy carried out by magic 8 ball and our best player going home we're sill muddling along. We've barely played well all season and yet somehow have 33 points.

With this comes hope. For we cannot really get any worse. Some good investment and some luck and there isn't any reason we can't get back into the top half. I know that we were promised more, but I think we'll all have to accept a slightly less steep ascent than last year. Gradual improvement shouldn't be difficult when you can hardly get any worse.

10. Which Side Are You On?

The fans.

I'm not going to blow smoke by making those sweeping statements so beloved of Liverpool and Man Utd fans about how we're the best in the country. But there are a lot of us. Each week, we are seeing record numbers coming to the London Stadium, and even though I keep reading about all these tourists and opposition fans in the home end, I never see them. All I see are genuine West Ham fans who couldn't previously get to see their team. It's anecdotal, and probably not worth much, but I know a lot of casual fans who've been to games this year and keep going back. Premier League football is a wildly popular concept, no matter how badly corners are being defended. 

For those who have season tickets I think it's strange for them to realise that other fans might not be able to watch their team, but it's true. Not everyone could afford football at Upton Park. Tickets were expensive and hard to come by, while the ground was murder to reach. Now, with more availability and decent pricing - especially for those taking children - the Club is simply more accessible. 

And the thing about real fans is they don't really give a shit about results. I've been to pretty much every game this year and I've left miserable but still wanting to get my season ticket. I've rekindled my love affair with the Club after the Allardyce era and all it needed was a couple of rabonas and Manuel Lanzini taking off. 

Maybe all this will fade away in a year or two, especially if we keep getting served up a level of mediocrity only matched by the succession of hosts they've picked for the ITV "Tonight" show. But I don't think so. I think the stadium is helping us to reach back out into our heartlands and pull fans back to the Club, and when the team eventually rise up above the current sea of unrelenting dross that they are currently sailing on - I think we will be a club on the rise. 

Leicester 1 - 0 West Ham (And Other Ramblings)

1. I Find Your Lack Of Faith Disturbing

Adieu, 2016! You began so promisingly and tailed off like Roberto Firmino driving home for Christmas.  (And you'll remember how puritan the British media are about footballers drinking so I'm sure we haven't heard the end of that story...)

Anyway, enough about drunk Scousers - this isn't a report on our first game of 2016, when we convincingly dispatched Liverpool 2-0 - instead it's about our year ending finale when we somehow contrived to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory at the home of the Champions, Man City. Arsenal. Man Utd. Wait, what the fuck...Leicester, it says here?

So heartwarming

2. That's Not How The Force Works!

Ah yes, those loveable scamps Leicester City, who won the Premier League last year with a frankly delightful mix of scintillating counterattacking football, a solid defence, homespun Italian wisdom, racism and odds defying luck. 

If you consider our own season last time round, I find it tinged with frustration. Had we got even half of the contentious decisions involving our games down the stretch, we would have ended up in the Champions League positions. Consider those awful late penalty decisions at Chelsea and Leicester, the rescinded red card for Kouyate at home to Palace, the incorrectly disallowed goal against Arsenal and so on. 

But this a game played by fans up and down the land every week. We gather around with other fans and bemoan our luck, think only of the times we played well and dream of the "what if" scenario where nothing goes wrong. It's a pointless endeavour as it fails to consider the other side of the coin, where we need to consider all those times we did get lucky. 

What is remarkable about Leicester, however, is that their "what if" story lasted for a season. Those pub conversations that we all have where we discount the possibility of bad luck and bad form and player injuries and suspensions all magically joined up. Their competitors dissolved and they won the league going away. It wasn't even close, and was as deserved a victory as we've seen for many years. 

And almost as suddenly as they arrived on the scene, they disappeared. Kind of like Sylvester Stallone when he made Copland and we all thought he was going to be a serious actor and then he just carried on as before. As an example, going into this game they were five points behind us, despite the fact that we have played most of this season on drugs. 

I can't begrudge Leicester their title win, as it was deserved and a truly remarkable story. However, their team contains some players who are very easy to dislike, and every time I see them I think how unfair life is that a thing like this could have happened to someone as seemingly unpleasant as Jamie Vardy. But mostly I just wonder if we'll get our own "what if" story one day. 

3. In My Experience, There's No Such Thing As Luck

This game proved to be an almost perfect microcosm of our season, and indeed a good example of how "what if" scenarios generally play out. Going into it, we were largely positive after three successive wins, including our 4-1 demolition of Swansea. Leicester, by contrast, were spiralling somewhat with just one win in nine league games, and Vardy suspended for a red card picked up at Stoke. Somehow though, we started appallingly and despite recovering somewhat, there was only a frustrating disappointment at the end of it all. 

The Leicester owners had actually ordered 30,000 Vardy masks for fans to wear to the previous home game against Everton, which must have been a terrifying ordeal for Shinji Okazaki. This at least gave me comfort that our owners aren't the only ones who make insufferably stupid decisions to appease their fanbase.

Chat shit, get 30,000 masks with your face on

Even without Vardy, the Foxes were all over us in the opening twenty minutes here and had plenty of chances to take the lead before they actually did so. Islam Slimani rose unchallenged to thump home an Albrighton cross after 20 minutes, which might not have been quite so frustrating if he hadn't done almost the exact same thing after 5 minutes, hitting the post on that occasion. 

There is no denying that the player most at fault for the goal was Dimitri Payet, who failed to track Albrighton and allowed him to cross unchallenged for what was ultimately the winning goal. 

At this stage, we were being outfought and out thought in the middle of the park as Danny Drinkwater was running things, and Riyaz Mahrez was finally producing some semblance of the form he showed last season. 

Randolph needed to produce a couple of excellent saves to keep it to one, and we were seemingly hanging on. Curiously though, after Michail Antonio had thumped the bar from close range, that essentially signalled the end of Leicester as an attacking threat and we remained in the ascendancy for the rest of the game. Payet and Cresswell both tested Schmeichel with free kicks, and there was a ludicrous goal mouth scramble that somehow didn't result in a goal, but largely we just piled on lots of pressure without creating clear cut enough chances to fashion the goals to win this game.  

4. Look At The Size Of That Thing

As far as the statistics go, we had 60% of the possession and 25 shots on goal and yet it's hard to say we deserved to win this game. We didn't deserve to lose either, it should be said, but then who cares what anybody deserves? What if? What if nothing. And this is why we can't win the League, just in case you're wondering. 

xG map for Leicester City - West Ham. That's some shot volume for West Ham. pic.twitter.com/4muZkzOCf7

— Caley Graphics (@Caley_graphics) December 31, 2016

This shot map from Michael Caley shows up the disparity in chances for both sides, but it's worth noting that we mustered just five attempts on target, as opposed to four for Leicester. Given that we currently appear to be operating with the level of precision usually reserved for Royal Mail it can't be too big of a surprise that we couldn't get over the line here.

5. Great Shot Kid, That Was One In A Million

If you're wondering why shots on target would be relevant, firstly - why? Secondly, here are our numbers from last year (as shown at Footcharts):

And for this year:

As you can see, we've gone from being one of the best around to being worse than Swansea, somehow. At the same time as regressing hugely in terms of how frequently we hit the target, we have also started allowing the opposition to shoot on our goal whenever they want. Generally this is not a great recipe for success unless you are West Brom, in which case I have no fucking idea what is going on.

There is a theory that if you get lots of bodies into your own box, then you can disrupt opposition shot success, and Pulis is pretty much Exhibit A for this way of thinking. Alternatively, one could also theorise that West Brom have just been very lucky and will start regressing soon, but then we'd also have to consider that both Swansea and Palace have been unlucky and will start to recover as well. That's a lot to get your head around after a big New Year celebration.

The reality is that that this one metric on it's own isn't the key indicator of anything beyond whether a team is getting enough shots on target. Which we are not.

6. What I Told You Was True, From A Certain Point Of View

One notable element of this game was the way in which the home crowd got themselves very very agitated about....everything.

Indeed, it was almost as though they had been stoked up a bit by their ownership into believing they were somehow being victimised, by giving them 30,000 masks in support of a banned player, but I'm sure the Premier League would never let that happen.

Anyway, after Robert Huth and Daniel Amartey were both fortunate to stay on the pitch after poor challenges, one might have thought they'd have considered themselves fortunate, but alas, they had gone full Goodison by this point.

Every decision was met with howls of derision, and even the most straightforward judgement by referee Anthony Taylor was greeted as though he were Frank Drebin in The Naked Gun.

Referees every Leicester game. 

I actually thought Huth's tackle was fair enough, but in this day and age anything with studs showing is asking for trouble. Also Robert Huth is a prick, so I was all up for seeing him get sent off. As it was, Payet was roundly booed for the rest of the game for having the temerity not to jump straight up having been poleaxed by the German. 

The Amartey foul, however, should have been a straight red and would surely have been picked up on review if Taylor hadn't mystifyingly given him a yellow at the time. Noble hobbled off soon after (to boos, shockingly), as he couldn't run off the knee high impact of the Ghanaian's studs, and is now a doubt for the Man Utd game. 

Havard Nordtveit then decided to get in on the act with a bonkers thigh high lunge at Ben Chilwell, which also should have been a straight red, although given his leniency up to that point Taylor could hardly have sent him off without looking foolish. 

Just to remind us what a true fairytale story Leicester are, Kaspar Schmeichel then ran 40 yards to instruct Taylor to send Nordtveit off, and got himself booked in the process. 

They're just so refreshingly different!

7. Kill Him

With Noble's departure we saw the introduction of Manuel Lanzini into the deeper role he filled so well at Spurs, and he did pretty well again. The one obvious difference between the two is that Lanzini can beat a man, and therefore he can physically carry the ball forward from midfield. He lacks Noble's defensive diligence, but that's why you have two holding midfielders and I would stick with him for the Man Utd game, although that may be a moot point if Noble is injured. 

The reality is that Noble appears to have lost a yard this season, and without the players around him playing as well as they did last year (Payet and Kouyate here, as examples) his own weaknesses become magnified. 

I don't think he's finished, by any stretch, but our midfield isn't functioning as well as it did last season and at some point Bilic might have to consider the only thing he hasn't changed is his captain. With Obiang playing so well and Kouyate and Ayew both away for a month at the AFCON, he can probably mix and match for a while, but if we ever get them all fit and in the country at the same time then the reality is that a decision will have to be made. 

If nothing else, it seems odd that the engine room of one of our best performances of the year - Spurs away - has never been revisited. 

8. You Were The Chosen One

At the same time, Dimitri Payet seems to be in a rut. His performance at Swansea was a little under par, but covered up by better displays around him, and the fact that Swansea aren't a professional football team. 

Come back. Please.

Here though, he dipped back to the level of some of his early season form. As I've said previously, even when he's playing brilliantly, Payet flits in and out of games and never seems to completely imprint himself upon matches. His peripheral nature is probably the main reason why he is playing for us and not for Real Madrid. The reality is that if he could do all he does going forward, and still track back to prevent Albrighton making his cross, then he wouldn't be at a bottom half Premier League team.

But at this point, we need the Payet of the Middlesbrough game. That guy seemed infuriated by our failings and single handedly dragged us back into the game by sheer force of personality. A sort of relaxed Hulk, if you like. 

Somehow, however, that seems to have disappeared as the season has progressed. I don't believe that he doesn't care - I've said many times that is the first refuge for fans who don't want to look any deeper at why players aren't performing - but his interventions aren't having the same impact they once did. Indeed, his 90 minutes of futility here felt like some sort of performance art homage to our season overall. Nothing really worked, it wasn't bad but it wasn't good. It just happened and nobody knows why. A bit like season 2 of Broadchurch.

Instead of immediately questioning the player though, perhaps we should be asking ourselves why his form has dipped. Is our formation designed to get the best out of him? I can't answer that, as I'm not sure that our formation is designed to get the best out of anybody, but this is what we should be asking before we simply say a player doesn't care.

We don't need Payet to show more passion, or get booked more frequently, or turn into the second coming of John Moncur, who sacrificed being a useful player for being a crowd favourite at the end of his career. Instead, we just need him to be better. 

9. The Circle Is Now Complete

With this game out of the way, the transfer window opens and all the problems of this season of futility can now be fixed!

Terrifyingly, the two players seemingly at the top of our list are Jermain Defoe and Glen Johnson. You'll remember them as being part of our 2002 relegation team, which just happens to have been 14 fucking years ago. Sadly, they are both probably pretty reasonable targets given that we don't want to spend huge sums and we have very obvious positions of need at centre forward and right back.

In an ideal world we would be using this window to buy promising young players and loan them back to their clubs before taking them in the summer. This model has worked very well elsewhere, but in order for it to work you need proper scouting and a solid league position. We have neither. It would be lovely, for instance, to think that we might pick up Moussa Dembele from Celtic, but instead he'll doubtless join Spurs for a strangely small transfer fee in the summer, and then terrorise us forever. If only he was Colombian.

Instead, we are once again scratching around for older players or loans to rescue this lost season and prop us up until the summer. And all being led by David Sullivan, a man who could only be given that job if he owned the Club, because if he had to interview for it on the strength of his track record would be laughed out of the room.

Still, Happy New Year everyone.

10. You Have Much To Learn

Anyway, I'm sure the Club are approaching the transfer window with the necessary degree of professionalism. 

It's my time to shine the next month 😉🤗 happy transfer window.

— Jack Sullivan (@jsullivanwhu) January 1, 2017

Oh for fucks sake