West Ham 2 - 1 West Brom (And Other Ramblings)

"I'd rather see the world the way it used to be, a little bit of freedom all we're left

So catch me if you can, I'm goin' back"

- The Byrds, "Goin' Back"

I'm not into ruining your enjoyment of films, so if you haven't seen Mad Max: Fury Road and want to avoid spoilers then feel free to skip down until you see a shot map and start your West Brom experience there. You won't miss much.

But for those who have seen it, or don't care, then you'll know what I mean when I say that this game had an oddly familiar storyline. Fury Road is built upon a fairly flimsy plot that sees Charlize Theron, playing Imperator Furiosa, escape from a post apocalyptic Australian warlord by the name of Immortan Joe, with a handful of his "wives" in tow. Along the way they pick up Tom Hardy's Max Rockatansky, and battle their way past various pursuing forces to escape to a mythical Green Place where they presumably all plan to change their names to something sensible. The problem is that when they get there, it's just as barren as the rest of the world.

I was feeling a bit Furiosa myself until that last minute winner

Realising that only place around with any water and plants is Immortan Joe's hideout, they do the craziest thing possible....they turn around and go back.

Which not-at-all-crowbarred link brings me to David Moyes and this performance. Because we've made a bit of progress ourselves recently, and depending on how generous you feel, one could make the argument that we are a good penalty taker and a competent referee away from sitting comfortably in mid table. All of which has been achieved without Andy Carroll, and based largely on a more solid looking defence and a surprisingly decent number of goals scored, primarily due to Marko Arnautovic sparking into life.

And yet, with all of that in the bank, Moyes took the seemingly crazy decision here to revert back to the old Bilic style of play. Carroll was chosen up front at the tip of a particularly blunt spear, and we went back to that disastrously hopeless hybrid style of play where we smash lots of ineffective crosses in Carroll's general vicinity, while also trying to pass the pall through him as though he were a different type of player altogether. As it was, we reverted all the way back to last season and pulled out one of those typically awful Bilic wins with a late goal and we're mighty grateful for it, but...still.

This Moyes reign has been built on attempting to move past those familiar flaws and creating something different. What the last three games have told me is that with this particular set of players, and against similarly mediocre opponents to ourselves, we still have some enormous problems that have to be remedied this month.

But for all that, if this was a backwards step it was still a pretty productive one. Last minute winners have that extra frisson of wonderment because you know the opposition cannot come back, and in that sense are beautifully liberating. Your mind doesn't immediately start to process how long you have to cling on, and instead you can just hand yourself over completely to a moment of pure, unadulterated happiness. In such moments we remind ourselves of how even the most moribund game can be rescued by a fleeting moment of joy, and remember precisely why we fell in love with this whole bloody thing in the first place.

Wet Tuesday nights aren't generally great for epiphanies, but in the buffeting winds and constant rain of Storm Eleanor, it sure was nice to steal a win and take a step forward in our relegation struggle, even if we did it by going back.

***

"I'll never forget you, although at times we couldn't shake it

You're my joy, always remember me"

- The Noisettes, "Never Forget You"

I won't lie. When I saw that Carroll was starting this game, my heart sank. So much of his play this season has been uninspired and immobile, that to watch him now is to be reminded of Boxer being taken slowly and unwittingly to the knacker's yard. Truthfully, and this may sound ludicrous considering his goals, I didn't see much in his open play to suggest that analysis is particularly flawed. Sure, that's very "what have the Romans ever done for us?" and there were certainly occasional lovely moments of chest control and laying off, but by and large he looked forlorn and isolated as the game generally seemed to pass him by.

But, for all that, this shot map from Caley Graphics shows we did actually create a decent number of opportunities in the box, even if the low xG is reflective of how many men West Brom tended to get in front of those chances. Our first half attacks mainly relied on Manuel Lanzini arriving late and pouncing on second balls after Carroll had crashed into something in front of him, and the visitors were reliant upon some good saves from Ben Foster as a result. One piece of skill in particular from Lanzini, to pluck a swirling high ball from the sky, belonged to another, better, game.

Despite our pressure, West Brom had their own opportunities and after Rondon went close, James McClean picked up a loose ball and went on a long, mazy dribble that should have led to him taking a pointless long range shot in front of our goal. Instead, it hit Obiang, looped up and caught Adrian flat footed and gave the visitors the lead. They celebrated this by all running to the sideline and standing there drinking water until the referee eventually coaxed them back to the pitch. Thus began another long, boring exhibition of West Brom timewasting.

But football is a strange mistress and her whims cannot always be predicted or rebuffed. After that generally dreadful first half we were rejuvenated slightly by the half time introduction of Mark Noble for Pedro Obiang. I felt the Spaniard was a little bit unlucky insomuch as Cheikhou Kouyate was once again playing as if being remote controlled by an uninterested spaniel sat in the crowd, but he does always offer the mobility that is sadly lacking elsewhere in the team.

But with Noble came control, and finally some structure to our forward play beyond simply giving it to Masuaku and hoping for him to beat five men. And as poorly as I felt Carroll did in terms of linking up play, there can be no doubting the sensational quality of his goals. The first was what we once might have termed a typical Carroll goal, as Cresswell swung in a sumptuous cross and he greeted it like a pissed Geordie pirate swinging from the deck of one ship on to another and smashing opposition sailors into the sea. It was a thing of murderous, visceral beauty and even though he seems to do it less frequently than ever, there is still something irresistible about watching such a goal unfold.

Andy casually waits for a cross

I felt the second was better, if only because it required a more difficult technique. Noble and Lanzini combined to free Arnautivic down the left and his cross eluded everybody except for the exhausted Carroll, who brilliantly turned it back into the goal from the narrowest of angles with his weaker right foot. It was harsh on West Brom, although relegation battles are no place for sentiment, and also vindication for Moyes. For while I thought Carroll's inclusion simply sent us back to halfway house of Bilic's worst days, the man scored twice and won us the game, and that's not to be sniffed at. It's also likely that Moyes eyed up our stupid playing schedule and decided that playing him here against a knackered, slow team like West Brom, was preferable to having him play at Wembley against Spurs.

The worry with these brief resurgences from Carroll is that they have tended to cloud manager's minds and cause them to persist with him for long barren spells that we can ill afford. Equally, it's hard to ascertain whether he has reined in his crazily physical style because his body can no longer take it, or because Moyes has told him to for the sake of his disciplinary record, but there is no doubt that he seems slightly diminished as a physical threat at present.

But until we get a new striker who can offer more than the seemingly one dimensional Carroll and Hernandez, then we will have to go with what we have. And, if nothing else, Carroll doesn't ever give up and keeps working as hard as he can. I wouldn't play him, but I can see the appeal.

***

"Pack it up, pack it in, this is who I should have been

But instead I waste my time"

- Turin Brakes, "Timewaster"

There is a rule in association football which states that goalkeepers may not hold on to the ball for longer than six seconds. This rule does not apply to Ben Foster. Instead, he simply holds on to the ball for as long as he decrees is reasonable because the concept of linear time is beneath him. Even as you sit reading this, Ben Foster is wandering around the eighteen yard box at the London Stadium while referee Mike Jones looks lovingly at him, taps his watch and then fails to add any time on. 

Far be it for me to agree with Eric Dier, but Foster pulled this exact same shit with the exact same referee last month in a game at Wembley, and he got away with it here too. 

So, it's actually possible?

I don't hate West Brom. In fact, they're not too dissimilar a club to us in the sense that they've had to play second fiddle to local rivals, while having to battle with a lack of finance and boardroom competence. To me, there is always a spiritual connection between those of us who have to be permanent whipping boys for the Top Six. But...and I say this without meaning to offend any Baggies fans, I fucking despise this iteration of their team. 

It's not even much to do with the players, but simply a legacy of having Tony Pulis as a recent manager. And so it is that they waste time, foul cynically, play boringly and generally do everything that you would imagine the Patron Saint of Anti Football would instruct them to do. It's Alan Pardew's team now, of course, but it will take a while for him to rid them entirely of such DNA. 

I asked Mark Segal of Opta about the stats for this game and he confirmed that out of a game time of 97:59 the ball was in play for just 57:34. In fairness to West Brom, this was nowhere near as bad as Newcastle who managed to restrict our recent game to just 50:31 of game time with a world class display of procrastination. In both cases the referee added just four minutes.

But it's a frustrating trait either way, because it is so rarely punished effectively by officials. I wrote after the Newcastle game that the authorities must do something about this and move to a straightforward system of playing for sixty minutes and discounting any time when the ball is dead. There is no doubt that Pulis types would find a way to try and game that particular system, but it would be nice if they at least tried to give paying spectators something close to a full match for our inflated tickets. 

All of that being true, I still do sympathise with West Brom having to play us just two days after their last game while we had five days rest. The problem for us will come when we play Spurs on two days rest, and then go to Shrewsbury to play our under eleven team in the hope of getting knocked out and reducing our fixture load. Giving sides such disparate preparation time is manifestly unfair, and it was greatly to the visitors credit that one would have been hard pressed for most of the game to determine who exactly was supposed to be the rested team. That said, who cares. Thanks for the three points, Pards. 

***

"Don't let it bring you down, it's only castles burning

Find someone who's turning, and you will come around"

- Neil Young, "Don't Let It Bring You Down"

Kouyate, Reid and Madley. Not much good stuff happening here

A distinctly depressing part of our season so far has been the precipitous decline of some of our older players. Here Kouyate was once again atrocious, and Winston Reid joined him with yet another inconsistent and worrying display. Both are on long contracts that no other Premier League team would ever offer them, so it's hard to imagine them moving on purely because their financial situation is so strong here. This is the folly of having the 13th biggest wage bill in Europe and spending it on the second oldest squad in the Premier League. Indeed, Reid was even given a contract extension earlier in the season which he immediately celebrated with a soft muscle injury at Southampton. Sometimes we really are like a parody of ourselves. 

But their inconsistency leaves Moyes with a headache. Reid will almost certainly play at Spurs because Cresswell is injured, meaning we may revert to a back four which has generally seen us leak like the post iceberg Titanic. Even Angelo Ogbonna's marvellous recovery tackle here to stop Oliver Burke making it 2-1 was only necessary because our defence had been totally split open by a straightforward central ball over the top. I'm not sure Harry Kane will be so profligate. 

As for Kouyate, you'd imagine he will play too, because he can't seem to function alongside Obiang, and therefore with Noble a certainty to return it will be the Spaniard who drops out. This is all made more difficult by the fact that Moyes has no depth in central midfield whatsoever, meaning that he only really has an apparently declining Kouyate or a wildly inconsistent Obiang to choose from. I actually think the latter has been miles better when partnered with Noble, but if his passing disappears as it did here then he's not really a great deal of use, especially when we have so few genuinely good attacking options these days. 

Geo at Hammers Chat put together this video on our central midfield options, which I think does a decent job of capturing how rubbish Kouyate has been all season. This was really highlighted here when Noble came on, and seemingly revolutionised our play by simply putting his foot on the ball and looking for effective passes. By contrast, Kouyate - never much of a passer on his best day - simply ran around a lot and then made more two yard passes than I think I've ever seen. The guy who destroyed Spurs almost single handedly at the end of last season is not the one we are seeing now. In an odd way, you'd hope he is injured because if not then we might have to face up to the reality that he is another one who has fallen off that same cliff as Carroll, Zabaleta and Reid. What a squad we've constructed.

One player who isn't in danger of stumbling off any cliffs is Marko Arnautovic who has gone full circle from being a £24m waste of time to terrace hero all in the space of about four weeks. His work rate is impressive and visible, meaning that he was getting ripples of applause in the first half silence simply for running about a bit and pressuring defenders. At times, we can be very easily pleased. 

What he continues to do well, and where he is more useful, is popping up in areas of danger and linking cleverly with Lanzini. You sense that those two will have to do most of the attacking work in the absence of Antonio, but given that we've scored ten goals in our last four games there are certainly signs that we are carrying more threat. The indications also seem to be that Hernandez isn't going to be a Moyes player, as he's been reduced to a bit part role whereby he comes on late and hangs around in the box waiting for Carroll to maim someone and give him a knock down. The main thing I've drawn from watching our attacking in these last couple of games is that the single biggest boost we could get in January would be a fit and firing Michail Antonio back in the team. 

And on that point - while these points are precious and have inched us closer to safety, and importantly, away from Swansea and West Brom, there can be no doubt that we need help. While I am still not convinced that we have any money, and I can't wait for those accounts, there can be no argument any more that we shouldn't be adding players. Sneaking past a knackered West Brom in the last minute is all good fun, but hardly the signal of a burgeoning renaissance. 

So, it's the worst time to buy, and we have the worst recruitment team in the league, but we still need bodies. We are ludicrously exposed to injuries and suspension, and if Lanzini or Arnautovic were to go down for the season we would have next to no creativity available to Moyes. Although there is no chance that Stoke will sell to us, a reported bid for Joe Allen does make a sort of sense given that he would immediately become our best option in the middle. As much as I'd like to see Sakho get a chance that seems to be a dead duck, so he needs to be replaced, and we could really use some mobility in that back line too. And with our January fixtures being against Huddersfield, Bournemouth and Palace, we could really do with those reinforcements arriving as soon as possible. 

***

"And yet he tries so hard to please, he's just so keen

For you to listen, but no one's listening"

- Blur, "Charmless Man"

I am so sick of this shit. 

Honest to God, I am fed up of the constant barrage that West Ham fans have to face because a section of our support cannot behave in a manner that is consistent with the standards of civilised society. 

The latest excuse for the world to pile in has arisen because Jake Livermore was substituted here and then went into the crowd in an altercation with a fan. I saw none of this, because I sit in the upper tier and thus would need a high powered telescope to see anything that far away. Therefore, the first I knew of it was the following morning when I began to read accounts on social media from fans of other clubs. Most of these were insistent that the cause of the ruckus was racial abuse, while others were equally sure that it happened because a fan abused Livermore over the death of his infant son. The only thing that most of these accounts could agree on was that they had no idea what was actually said and were guessing based on their own prejudices. That's what you get for reading social media, I guess. 

Having followed it more closely today, both clubs have now issued statements, with West Brom explicitly stating that Livermore reacted to a comment from the crowd about his son, while West Ham's just says that they are looking into it and removed the fan at the time. Having read a couple of accounts from people around the scene, each state that this in fact wasn't what was said and that actually Livermore misheard a comment referring to him as a "Yid". That hasn't really percolated through to the majority of media outlets, who have simply reported the West Brom statement and little else. 

As a West Ham fan, I feel I need to point out that if the version of those supporters is true it doesn't really reflect much better on the supporter in question. Calling someone a "Yid" is pretty much always done pejoratively by West Ham fans, and symptomatic to me of a problem that we have with anti Semitism among a small, but loud enough section of our support. I know that there are those who may dispute that, but when we were 2-0 down at Wembley I heard that godawful hissing bullshit again and we'd be better off to admit we have that element among our fans than try and deny it and allow it to bubble under. 

So what we're left with here is another unsavoury incident that drags us all through the mud and fills up our social media timelines with yet more broad brush characterising of West Ham fans as scum. Of course I should ignore that and rise above it, but the problem is that these days, that is how a lot of people consume their news and opinions. I haven't read a hard copy newspaper in a long time because I read everything online. And with that ease of access comes the democracy of opinion - which is to say that everybody has one, and now we have to hear it. So my frustration is that these actions by individuals or small groups just tar all of us with the same loose tag, and continues to diminish the standing of the club. 

So let's get this in perspective - this was apparently one person in a crowd of fifty thousand screaming reprehensible things. Whether he used the word "Yid" or kid doesn't change that, but it was just one person. No West Ham fan condones that, but a few too many of us get involved in screaming abuse at players of all stripes. I've been thinking a lot about this recently, and in particular this notion that the game of football is all about opinions. And I am forced to ask myself - why?

Because here's the thing about that - the opinion of this guy who yelled at Jake Livermore wasn't really worth hearing was it? The opinions of the fans who threw bananas on to pitches in the Seventies weren't worth hearing either. Richard Keys opinions have never been worth listening to. So I guess what I'm saying is that I really don't understand why anyone would think it's okay to stand five feet from a professional footballer and scream personal abuse at him. I think that makes you a dickhead. And there you go, that's my opinion. 

Bournemouth 3 - 3 West Ham (And Other Ramblings)

"Night, night after day

Black flowers blossom"

- Massive Attack, "Teardrop"

There is a universal truth about being a sports fan, which is that when we pay our money to enter an arena and watch our event, we believe the encounter we are about to watch will be fair. We have to believe the fight won't be rigged, or that the race is straight or the competitors aren't cheating, otherwise the whole thing is a waste of time.

Now, let me state here and now that I don't believe that a game between Bournemouth and West Ham would be worth fixing. Of all the things the Bilderberg Group are doing, I have to imagine this would be quite a long way down the list. We have again been the victim of more poor officiating, and because our minds are conditioned to remember negative things more than positive, it feels like such an overwhelming weight of misfortune that we then begin to wonder if it truly is bad luck or something more sinister. For when a player who is offside scores a last minute equaliser with his hand, and a referee seemingly overrules his linesman to award that goal, then it's hard not to do a double take. 

Brown envelope out of sight

So let me invoke Hanlon's Razor here - never ascribe to malice that which can be adequately explained by incompetence. It is bizarre to suggest that referee Bobby Madley was bribed to turn this game in Bournemouth's favour, but I equally don't have any qualms in saying that his performance here was appalling. His first error was to fail to send off Simon Francis for a head high, studs up challenge on Cheikhou Kouyate. I don't think Francis was intending to catch Kouyate, and had his eyes firmly on the ball, but when you raise your studs to that height you also have a responsibility to ensure you don't land them on a fellow professionals face. Rather than consult another official or take his time and weigh the decision up, Madley instead brandished a yellow card immediately, which has the added effect of ensuring Francis won't even get the retrospective ban he deserves. And for anyone who hasn't seen it, and thinks perhaps I'm being a little melodramatic - you can judge for yourself here: 

Just a yellow - nothing to see here

Similarly, Madley chose not to act on Josh King accidentally elbowing Pedro Obiang in the face off the ball. That probably sounds crazy, but the Norwegian flung his arms out in frustration at a decision and caught Obiang unaware, knocking him to the ground. I don't think there was any intent in the actions of King either, and that is more relevant in his case because the laws clearly state that a player must be dismissed for "deliberately striking an opponent". It doesn't seem unreasonable to me that players should refrain from throwing their elbows around, but they are also people and if we try to remove all joy and human emotion from football then we run the risk of turning this whole thing into BBC1 on Christmas night. 

But where Madley fatally impacted this game was in the dying moments. We had floundered and fluked our way to a 3-2 lead, and with just seconds remaining a hopeful ball was pumped into our box. In truth, we hadn't dealt with that line of attack very well all day, and true to form Nathan Ake won the header. He looped the ball back across goal and a marginally offside Callum Wilson diverted the ball in with this arm. 

The referee's assistant (oh the irony of that title) immediately raised his flag, and the goal was all set to be disallowed. At that point Madley trotted over to the sidelines. That, in itself, is fairly unusual given that he has a radio link with his assistants and I'm not sure I've ever really seen a referee do that for a straightforward offside decision. After a lengthy enough deliberation for a video referee to have reviewed the incident in real time and made the correct decision, Madley awarded the goal, because of course he fucking did. 

Delving into the world of conjecture for a moment I have to suspect that the following happened: the assistant flagged for offside, Madley intimated that he didn't think Wilson touched the ball, the assistant pointed out that this couldn't really be true as the ball wasn't going in until Wilson used his arm to push it in, Madley disagreed because Callum Wilson is a theoretical concept and awarded the goal and the stadium announcer promptly told the world that Callum Wilson has just scored the equaliser. Some fucking magic, that. 

In the end, I don't believe this was anything more than poor officiating but it's easy to get drawn into thinking otherwise. After all, I believe that there is an institutional corruption that sits at the heart of most sport. Had this happened against Manchester United, for example, I think that Madley would have disallowed the goal purely because human beings typically do the things that allow them the easiest lives. Referees know that they can make a decision like this against West Ham and be in the news cycle for one night. Do it against Mourinho and you're infamous for months. 

So there you go: I think that elite level football is ludicrously tilted towards the rich; I believe that pretty much every high level athlete is using performance enhancing drugs and just because it started with track and field, swimming and cycling doesn't mean it won't be football and rugby soon enough; I believe that cup draws are probably at least partially fixed to satisfy the demands of television, sponsors and Vladimir Putin; and I think that one reason that governing bodies in football are so reluctant to introduce measures to help referees get more decisions correct is that big clubs don't want that to happen - why, after all, would you give up one of the inherent advantages of being a big club - namely that you can rely on most line decisions going your way? 

But for all that might make me a tin foil hatted conspiracy theorist in your eyes, I can honestly say that I don't think referees are biased against West Ham for the simple reason that there would be no point. So when you boil all of that down, the reality is probably just that Bobby Madley is a bit of a shit referee. 

***

"This is the highlight of your miserable life

A pessimist is never disappointed"

- Theaudience, "A Pessimist is Never Disappointed"

I could write yet more about the decisions in this game, and how I can't see any difference between the "deception" of Manuel Lanzini and the "magic" of Callum Wilson, but fixating too much on officiating would detract away from yet another disappointing performance. It may seem strange to say that when we scored three goals, but we spent most of this game clinging on to the coattails of a decidedly poor Bournemouth team and were particularly fortunate to pull level at 2-2, when Marko Arnautovic took advantage of Asmir Begovic wearing clown shoes in the driving rain.

We started well enough, with James Collins celebrating his recall by thumping home a trademark near post header from an Aaron Cresswell corner. I especially enjoyed this because Bournemouth placed a man on the post to specifically prevent this and he moved far enough from his spot to allow the ball in. It is worth remembering stuff like this when we question how managers can't organise their teams to defend properly - some footballers are so poor at concentrating that they can't even stand still when they're told to.

God bless men who can't stand still

That early lead didn't look particularly secure, however, as our back line seemed to have over indulged at Christmas, and the home team flooded forward in search of an equaliser, creating plenty of opportunities. King should have scored from one such chance, before Dan Gosling latched on to a weak Collins clearing header and rifled home the leveller. Oddly, we really should have been two ahead by this stage as Arthur Masuaku produced another trademark run before picking out Andre Ayew, who put the ball narrowly wide. On such slender threads can satisfactory Boxing Nights hang.

By this stage the rain was hammering down like Blade Runner, although even Roy Batty might have seen some new things here. After Ake scrambled home another shittily defended set piece to give the home side the lead their pressure warranted, it looked as though we would have yet another disappointing trip to the coast. Enter Begovic, who casually controlled a backpass before falling over his own feet, allowing Arnautovic - who hadn't stopped running - to capitalise with a neat left footed finish. Score one for the Moyes school of sergeant majoring the fuck out players.

Better was to come when Masuaku again went roaming with just a minute to go and picked out Chicharito who made a complete Benteke of it, but was saved when Begovic again lost control of his limbs and Arnautovic poked home his fifth goal in as many games. With just injury time to come, it seemed as though we had done enough to steal a win we didn't really deserve - a trait that Moyes would be very welcome to bring with him from all those years at Goodison.

Unfortunately, there was still some Truly, Madley, Deeply action to come and as it was we are left to ponder what kind of world we live in where we can take four points from Arsenal and Chelsea but just one from Newcastle and Bournemouth, and that the only consistent thing about this team is that you don't ever know what they are going to do.

The worry is that these were two games where we could reasonably have expected to have shown a little more in attack. Sitting back and soaking up constant pressure is fine against the teams with several hundred million more to spend on their squads, but these were supposed to the games where we showed we could punch back against our fellow strugglers. And so we scored five and conceded six and the only thing we know is that we know nothing.

***

"Am I moving back in time? Just standing still?"

- The War on Drugs, "Pain"

High up on my list of concerns is the way in which our team seem to be ageing in front of our eyes. Pablo Zabaleta had to replaced here because Bournemouth targeted him in much the same way as Newcastle did, and got nearly as much joy from it. He gets a light ride from the London Stadium crowd because he's enthusiastic and runs around like a toddler on Fanta, but the truth is that his positional play still leaves a lot to be desired and we are forced to expose him as a wing back because we can't defend without playing three in the middle. The chances of him being able to play twice in three days strikes me as minimal, meaning that I suspect we'll see Rice at Wembley against Spurs, and seriously - are Sam Byram's hamstrings made out of spaghetti?

Zaba's going on a run again!

Zabaleta has also been booked seven times already this season, opening him up to red cards, and when players like Ryan Fraser can give him the kind of torrid afternoon that he did here, it bodes poorly for the remaining eighteen months of that characteristically stupid contract. Likewise, Winston Reid didn't even make the team here as he dropped out for Collins and we are now reduced to hoping that he didn't injure himself in doing so. With Fonte also out long term, it would explain the apparent interest in Alfie Mawson who might cost £25m but can at least still go on an 18-30 holiday if he wants to. I don't know much about Mawson, but it would be lovely if Moyes could target a centre back who can actually pass the ball rather than hoof it in the general direction of Andy Carroll irrespective of whether he is on the pitch or not. 

In front of them, Cheikhou Kouyate had another afternoon to forget, as his Catherine Wheel impression continued to have little impact on the game. Pedro Obiang has attracted a lot of opprobrium for his performances in these last couple of games, but I thought it was noticeable how much better he played alongside a proper central midfielder - Mark Noble - than we saw here. There is quite a lot of pressure on that central midfield area in this formation, given that we are giving up a body to play in the back three, and it asks a lot of the defensive midfielder. After a promising start, in which Obiang looked like he might actually improve a little under Moyes, he has regressed and was replaced here by Carroll - our Goliath for all seasons. I'm not quite ready to judge the Spaniard in this system until we see him get a run out alongside a better midfield partner, but I don't think it was a coincidence that we looked much better when Lanzini went deeper and started our attacks. Either way, I predict some reinforcements will be arriving soon. 

The double substitution of Carroll and Chicharito was supposed to galvanise us, but in reality just highlighted the paucity of attacking options that we currently seem to have. With only Lanzini and Masuaku able to create from deeper areas, we have to either rely on the mobile physicality of Antonio and Arnautovic or resort to the long range bombing approach and launch mortars at Fort Carroll and hope for something to land at the feet of Chicharito. And while we do that, the plan was that the sturdy defensive setup constructed by Moyes would allow us to keep clean sheets. 

If we can't maintain any defensive structure while being more expansive, then Moyes will have to apply the handbrake and revert to a less attacking style to try and give us a chance of winning games like this 1-0. It might not be pretty, but relegation scraps never are. In the driving rain of the South Coast, we dropped two very precious points because of some awful refereeing, but also because we were defensively all over the place. 

***

"Someone's got it in for me, they're planting stories in the press

Whoever it is, I wish they'd cut it out quick, but when they will I can only guess"

- Bob Dylan, "Idiot Wind"

It's nearly January everyone, and that means that David Sullivan is going to be staying up really late ringing agents in South America and furiously flicking through YouTube highlight reels in search of the next Nene. As every West Ham fan knows, the New Year generally brings yet more stupidity in the boardroom, and with the team waist deep in relegation trouble, this time will be no different. Brilliantly, someone in the West Ham/Sullivan PR team decided that a great way to kick off this particular transfer window would be to carry a story in the Mail about how Dave Sullivan Jr lives in a £40m luxury flat and "works harder than anyone he knows".

Another heart warming Christmas story

In fairness to the kid, I'd hate to be judged on things I said and did at the age of twenty, and so I'll choose to ignore the generally crass theme of the article and the incredibly tone deaf decision to celebrate unfathomable, undeserved wealth at a time when so many people in the country are suffering in a stagnant economy. But, honestly, who the hell thinks this stuff is a good idea? Why do these kids keep getting repeatedly exposed to public scrutiny of their lives and activities when it is such a red rag to a fanbase who already think their father is tight and screwing money out of the club? None of this is complicated - but when we're about to enter a month of transfer activity which will define our season, why would you be in the media boasting about your wealth...

...if you're going to do things like this?

Can you see how these two pictures cause problems, Dave? It doesn't matter whether the N'Zonzi story is true, or the fact that I agree that a loan approach is better, because the account that carried it has over sixty thousand followers and this cheap looking style fits a club who seem to have no money.

There were also lots of rumours today about Reece Oxford moving permanently to Germany, although we may now apparently recall him to play for us instead. The rumour there was that Moyes was keen to move the kid on in order to get some cash in for new signings. Quite why we should need cash given that we spent such a low sum in the summer is an issue in itself, but beyond that it also highlights the total stupidity of allowing a potentially temporary manager to make such decisions. Ask yourself whether you would want the substitute teacher expelling your kid, and that will give you an idea of how good a decision making set up this would be. 

Moyes doesn't need to worry about what our squad will look like in 2020 because he knows that if we  go down this summer he won't be here to worry about it. Once again a Director of Football would be best placed to make such a decision, and once again we don't have one. Let's therefore hope that the Oxford recall is with a view to turning him into a better West Ham player, rather than with a view to turning him into enough cash to buy declining 29 year old players for a relegation battle. We already have a squad full of them. 

It's unimportant that one of these can get you a Mirallas

Yes, Oxford might have an attitude problem, and maybe he has a difficult agent, but those things are true of lots of teenage players. In the end, this is a chance for us to get a potentially high quality player for nothing, and flogging him to allow Sullivan to waste yet more funds on his idea of good footballers doesn't do anything for me. Oxford will mature one day, and we'll regret it immensely if he does so somewhere outside East London. Ultimately, when teams who are better than you want your players, that should tell you something about the asset you have. If we truly don't think we can get the best from an eighteen year old then I guess we should move him on, but in turn I would be asking some questions about exactly why that was the case. 

So, who should we target? Well, I've outlined above how I'd like a centre back - although that is a slightly difficult assessment to make given that we don't really know how highly the club rate any of Reece Oxford, Reece Burke or Not Reece Declan Rice. A right sided defender to cover Zabaleta and Byram's incredible Chinese noodle hamstrings would also be useful. But we also clearly need a central midfielder who can get about the pitch and create something, while a striker that Moyes can trust to do some Diafra Sakho type things without being Diafra Sakho would really be helpful too. 

There is absolutely no chance of us getting all of those players in January, so to my mind they absolutely have to target the midfield as we are currently only playing a three man midfield and still had to play strikers in there for the Arsenal cup game. N'Zonzi wouldn't have been a bad short term acquisition but at 29 he would be yet another to add to the phalanx of ageing one-last-contract types that clutter up our squad. 

A better approach, for this season only, might be to target the big clubs and look at non playing member of their squads who are borderline choices for their countries and taking them on short loans. Anyone wanting to play at the World Cup will need game time between now and May, and we would be the ideal place for someone to stage a revival, provided we don't introduce them to Joe Hart. 

As such, the link to Andre Schurrle makes sense, as would a return for Andre Gomes - a rumoured target around the time of the William Carvalho debacle. I like the idea of getting these hungry, motivated players, who can arrive and have an immediate impact. Of course, historically this has never worked for us but if the alternative is buying another Robert Snodgrass, then I'm happy to give it another whirl. 

***

"But the drumbeat strains of the night remain
In the rhythm of the new born day"
- Al Stewart, "The Year of the Cat"

Some of you may have noticed that I didn't post an article for the Newcastle game. This wasn't a fit of pique but more because I decided to spend Christmas Eve with the family rather than spewing out 3,000 words on how our midfield was overrun by Mo Diame. I did, however, vent a little on Twitter which you can find here. 

1. No H List today, so here are some thoughts on yesterday. A game of fine margins that highlighted some flaws we’ve known about all season, and brought in to focus how - yet again - major surgery is needed in January.

— HeadHammerShark (@TheHList) December 24, 2017

I've also been asking for some recollections from fans on Frank Lampard Jr, for a retro piece I'm writing at the moment. Any contributions would be gratefully accepted.

And with that, all that remains is for me to wish you all a very Happy New Year and to thank you for reading The H List in 2017. See you in 2018 - it's West Brom to start, so that's bound to be hugely entertaining.

Arsenal 1 - 0 West Ham (And Other Ramblings)

"I'm wasting all my time

I push it all away"

- Day Wave, "Wasting Time"

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

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

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

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

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

***

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

Or just twenty thousand people standing in a field?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

***

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

Native son, speaking in the native tongue

I got my eyes on tomorrow"

- Mos Def, "Hip Hop"

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

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

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

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

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

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

***

"Just wait 'til tomorrow

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

- New Order, "Regret"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

***

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

I guess I gave credit where it wasn't deserved

Some brothers must have preferred not to keep their word"

- Jurassic 5, "Great Expectations"

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

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

Fifty grand to start!

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

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

What a way to do business. 

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

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

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

Stoke 0 - 3 West Ham (And Other Ramblings)

"Honey, it's been a long time waiting

Such a long, long time

But I can't stop now"

- Embrace, "Gravity"

We may be into territory where we need to admit something here. It's been around eighteen months since I started writing The H List again on a regular basis, inspired by the nascent exhilaration of the 2015/16 season, and during that time the club have managed to get pretty much everything wrong. The stadium move was a painful disappointment, the transfer dealings have resembled a Brewster's Millions remake and the ongoing saga over when Slaven Bilic would be fired did little to suggest that the Directors of the club had any idea what they were doing. 

I've finally found a manager in a worse position than me!

But as David Moyes' new look West Ham side swept away a woeful Stoke City, it occurred to me that we probably need to acknowledge that David Sullivan may have played a blinder here. When Moyes was first mooted as a possible successor to Bilic I fell into the same trap as many, painting him as a cheap, busted flush who had failed for five years and somehow managed to threaten a female journalist in his last job. 

I'm still uncomfortable at the last point, but that might be a discussion about contrition and punishment for another day. As it is, Moyes seems rejuvenated. He no longer has the thousand yard stare of a three tour Vietnam veteran and instead looks like a man in control of his own destiny once more. By contrast, Mark Hughes wears the permanent sneer of a man who haggles in Poundland, and I don't mind admitting I'll raise a glass when he gets his P45 for Christmas. I suspect it will be bitter, much like the Welshman. 

It's too soon to be feting Sullivan as a genius, especially given that the reason for the precarious nature of our current position is that he persisted far too long with Bilic when he'd clearly lost his way. But if he has to carry the can for that inertia, then he should also get the credit for this - currently - good looking appointment. It has been a long time since I've seen a West Ham team go away from home like this and simply dismantle an opponent with fast, incisive counterattacking and a solid defence. It won't always be this way, of course, but if we can't take a moment to drink in a victory like this, and simultaneously revel in the disappointment of our vanquished opponent, then what the hell are we here for? It's this misplaced sense of superiority which binds us all together as football fans, after all. 

***

"I went out into the night, I went out to find some light
Kids are swinging from the power lines, nobody's home so nobody minds"
- Arcade Fire, "Neighbourhood #3 (Power Out)"

This game ended up kicking off an hour late because Mark Hughes got into an argument with a traffic warden and staged a one man sit in outside the Britannia Stadium gates. This prevented electricians from getting in to restore power to the area and the stand off was only ended when some local children agreed to pay the £60 fine for Hughes. I imagine. 

Uncle Mark's coming for Christmas, kids!

It's always a little disconcerting for fans when things like this happen, as you never quite know how players will react to small changes in routine. The extra hour of warming up, or physio or sitting around listening to music affect different people in different ways. We came flying out of the traps, however, and settled into a nice looking style of play where Manuel Lanzini was able to get forward in support of Marko Arnautovic and Michail Antonio. Without the constant need to worry about losing the ball and not getting it back for ages - as with recent weeks - we pushed our wing backs further forward, and noticeably sought to play higher up the pitch than we did against the good teams we've been playing lately. 

I am slowly coming to terms with our front two comprising a pair of converted wide forwards, because both are physically strong and have enough mobility to stretch defences. It is a far cry from watching us smash it long towards Andy Carroll in the manner of kids launching water balloons at an abandoned tree house, after all. So it was that we had a number of early long range chances, as we used our smaller share of possession much more incisively than the home team. Antonio and Lanzini had sighters and generally we carried a sense of menace that has been absent for a while, as that front pair pushed and pulled the immobile Stoke backline out of their preferred positions, and received a few bruised ankles for their troubles. 

We were very fortunate to take the lead, however, as Ryan Shawcross took a break from kicking Antonio to head a cross against a post. Thereafter followed the big controversy of the game as Lanzini carried the ball seventy yards before falling under the challenge of Erik Pieters. I thought that Masuaku committed a foul before it got to the Argentine anyway, but there's no denying that his run was brilliant and also that Pieters was stupid to go to ground in the box and not get anywhere near the ball. 

But we also have to accept that diving is a blight on the game and, while I feel no sympathy for Stoke, we do need to try and eradicate it because decisions like this can just as easily go against us. So, although I thought Lanzini went over slightly in anticipation of a physical contact that never really came, he bought the penalty with a dive and had it been at the other end I would have been fuming. 

As I write this, Lanzini has been charged and will miss the next two games. I'm not unhappy about divers being punished but there are a couple of points to observe here. One is that players will now have to take oncoming contact in incidents such as these. I guess that's fine until you have to play against, well, Stoke and Ryan Shawcross comes a knockin'. Secondly, this creates a huge imbalance in the disciplinary process whereby players who are booked for a foul cannot be punished later, even when a red card is merited. Therefore we get a situation where Harry Kane and Dele Alli can commit red card tackles in the game at Manchester City and yet neither will miss a match, while Lanzini misses two for an offence that didn't physically endanger anybody. That isn't fair. 

It's worth keeping an eye on who gets punished under these rules too. We all like to highlight opposition players who dive - Kane, Jamie Vardy, Raheem Sterling and Ashley Young off the top of my head - but don't like to accept it when it's closer to home. Lanzini dived and deserves a punishment, but there will be plenty of others who will do the same this season and I will be very interested to see how many Top Six players are hit under the same rules. I'm also slightly perplexed that players who go down in a game and are noticed will get either a booking or nothing, but players punished retrospectively get a two game ban. That seems...inconsistent. 

After all of that, Mark Noble stepped up on his 300th Premier League appearance for us and gave us a deserved lead. As we saw at Everton a couple of weeks back, it's very useful to have a man who can hold his nerve in such situations. 

***

"But now it's come to distances and both of us must try

Your eyes are soft with sorrow

Hey, that's no way to say goodbye"

- Leonard Cohen, "Hey, That's No Way To Say Goodbye"

Stoke fans have not reacted well to Marko Arnautovic heading south in pursuit of fame and glory and, well, yes loads more money. We're in no position to talk, of course, given that there are West Ham fans who were not born until the Nineties but still boo Paul Ince's son, for reasons they know not why. We hold grudges better than anyone, and in fact I feel it might very well be our defining feature as supporters. Cross us and we will boo the shit out of you forty years later when you're trying to buy a mobility scooter. 

What is odd though, is that even the most one eyed Stoke fan can surely see the logic behind his decision. West Ham can pay far more in wages than Stoke, so it's perfectly logical that a 28 year old, signing his last long term deal, would plump for the club that can pay him the most. I won't even descend into the parochial rabbit warren of arguing whether London is a better place to live than Stoke, but just purely from a financial standpoint it is an obvious decision. Stoke fans will of course argue that West Ham is a basket case club, but when the options on the table are "earn the same and stay at this middling Premier League club" or "earn more and move to this basket case middling Premier League club" I simply cannot see how there can ever be any surprise when a player chooses the latter.

Arnie, here, Adebayoring it very nicely indeed

It probably didn't hurt that good ol' Slaven was doing the buying because you get the sense that Moyes wouldn't ever buy a player like Arnautovic, even if he is doing a substantially better job than Bilic of utilising him. It also couldn't have hurt to have been leaving Mark Hughes behind, given that he has the permanent expression of a man who heckles children at school assemblies.

What is even stranger about all this is that the Stoke fans then dished out all the abuse they could manage and then still seemed utterly shocked - SHOCKED I TELL YOU - to discover that Arnautovic would then want to give them some back when he scored. Even better was Hughes giving him some abuse as he walked off, and then later expressing his disappointment that Arnautovic had responded at all. Then we got the usual bullshit about how Stoke had "taken a chance" on him when nobody else would, and he should have repaid that faith. Yeah, calm down Sparky - you're making it sound like you recruited him to the Dirty Dozen from Death Row. Arnautovic is a professional footballer who was playing for Werder Bremen at a level very similar to the one he found in England. Football fans and managers love to pull out the sanctimony card, but the reality is that clubs like Stoke can drop £2m on a player like him without blinking an eyelid, so portraying that as a huge risk is mendacious and patronising.

So, he played very well for Stoke and then saw an opportunity for a big payday and took it, and in doing so displayed all the loyalty to Stoke that they would have shown him if he'd broken his leg six months from the end of his contract. And talking of that, it's worth remembering that when Stoke fans try and clamber on to the high ground they do so as a bunch who booed Aaron Ramsey for having the temerity to have his leg shattered by one of their players. Football fans are a strange bunch.

This is a ruthless business and while I understand the frustration at losing players to a team they think (incorrectly) that they are better than, I struggle to get how Stoke fans feel that some type of blood oath has been shattered. I would give them the same advice I give myself whenever we encounter our own Arnautovic types - Hi Dimitri! - forget about the players, we're cheering for laundry.

***

"Well, I'm so tired of crying

But I'm out on the road again, I'm on the road again"

- Willie Nelson, "On The Road Again"

I feel I should also point out, for any of you who missed the game, that although a 3-0 win where the opposition are restricted to no shots on target sounds like a comfortable win, it didn't necessarily always feel that way. This was primarily due to us missing more chances than one could have conceivably believed without prior knowledge of a match fixing scandal. Arnautovic alone had five clear chances before scoring, and hit the woodwork twice, and generally looked like he would never score, until he did. After Diafra Sakho was introduced he also had a couple of good chances himself, including one where he attempted to manoeuvre the ball in using just his groin, which was an admittedly interesting development.

Thus, there was a cavalcade of "Mighty Ducks" style misses before Arnautovic finally scored in the 75th minute. He then left the field four minutes later to the sound of Hughes berating him for not signing up to his petition demanding that spikes be placed in doorways all through Stoke to deter homeless people from sleeping there, 'cos "they'll never learn otherwise, Beryl". Probably. 

Sakho then popped up with a third, and we could easily have grabbed a fourth but for Hernandez shooting from a tight angle when Lanzini was unmarked about eight fucking inches from goal. It is superbly churlish to say it, but we actually missed out on a chance to massage our goal difference a bit in this game.

The Caley Graphics shot map does show that Stoke had some decent chances, albeit they never managed to direct any on target. The best of them fell to Ryan Shawcross when the score was still at 1-0, but because he was unmarked in the area he had nobody to kick, and thus with all his focus on an actual footballing skill, he headed it over.

What is immediately noticeable about our chances is how many were inside the box and how many were really high quality chances. By contrast, Stoke had a lot of efforts but had nine blocked compared to just one for us. We managed to get seven efforts on target, compared to none for Stoke, and also hit the bar twice. That is a good day at the office.

We also absorbed the loss of Winston Reid to suspension by bringing in James Collins, a man with the distribution qualities of an Amazon delivery driver. Still, even with Collins smacking it over the neighbour's gate every so often, we still built nicely from the back, and really got purring late in the day when Stoke advanced and left space for Lanzini to run riot. I continue to be astounded at the deathbed conversions of Ogbonna and Cresswell who have transformed themselves from shell shocked Tommies to confident SAS types in the space of a month, and it says much for the system that Moyes is building that this was the third different iteration of his three at the back system, and we've still only conceded to Manchester City using it. Rice for Reid for Collins and everything has kept on rolling as it is. That's how it's supposed to be.

When Bilic left we had one wheel firmly in the ditch by the side of the road, the airbags had gone off, the hazard lights were flashing and someone had left the radio tuned to bloody Capital, with a broken volume setting. In short...hell. What Moyes has done is dragged us out of that ditch and put us firmly back on the road again. We're only at the beginning of the journey, but I'm certainly encouraged by the fact that the driver at least appears to know which way he's supposed to be going.

***

"No sweeping exit, or offstage lines

Could make me feel bitter, or treat you unkind"

- Gram Parsons, "Wild Horses"

With a corner definitively turned and everything on the up, it could be argued that we could really have done without an away cup quarter final at Arsenal. Unfortunately, given the size and quality of their squad it's hard to see that we'll get much change out of a well rested set of Arsenal reserves, especially without Lanzini and Arnautovic who both look like they will be missing.

It's worth pointing out that if we didn't get bad draws in cup competitions we wouldn't ever get pulled out of the hat. Of course, we can't say for certain that's what happened this time as Carabao conducted entire thing offscreen in a not-at-all-suspicious draw that miraculously kept all of the biggest teams apart. Presumably someone had overheated the balls before hand and one had burst in to flames and set the whole set on fire.

As it is, our draws since the beginning of the 2014/15 season are as follows:

2014/15

League Cup

Sheffield United (h) : 1-1 (Lost on penalties, those useless bastards)

FA Cup

Everton (a)  : 1-1
Everton (h) : 2-2 (Won on penalties, those wonderful bastards)
Bristol City (a) : 1-0
WBA (a) : 0-4 (That's right - four. FOUR fucking nil to West Fucking Brom)

2015/16

League Cup

Leicester (a) : 1-2

FA Cup

Wolves (h) : 1-0
Liverpool (a) : 0-0
Liverpool (h) : 2-1
Blackburn (a) : 5-1
Man Utd (a) : 1-1
Man Utd (h) : 1-2

2016/17

League Cup

Accrington Stanley (h) : 1-0
Chelsea (h) : 2-1
Man Utd (a) : 1-4

FA Cup

Man City (h) : 0-5

2017/18

League Cup

Cheltenham (a) : 2-0
Bolton (h) : 3-0
Spurs (a) : 3-2
Arsenal (a) : Erm

FA Cup

Shrewsbury (a) : Double erm

"Do you think they'll notice we haven't actually done a draw?"

So for anyone keeping score at home that's each of the self styled Big Six, including Manchester United twice away from home in quarter finals. In addition, we managed to get Leicester away in their title winning season, and of the eighteen draws made in that time we've been away on twelve occasions. I've not got too much time for conspiracy theories on that last point, as rigging draws to keep us from playing at home really would be a spectacular waste of time and effort, but in general nothing would surprise me less than a revelation that Cup sponsors are able to request that bigger teams are kept apart in the draw.

So it's a bit unlucky, and tomorrow nights game comes in the middle of a run of important league fixtures where we absolutely have to pick up points. At this early stage, with Lanzini suspended, Noble and Fernandes apparently injured, and Kouyate still a doubt, it does rather beg the question of who plays in midfield. People might be yelling for Sead Haksabanovic and Domingos Quina, but chucking two 18 year olds in to face Arsenal seems like a recipe for disaster, especially as another - Declan Rice - will presumably be playing as well. It's at times like this that it seems even more foolhardy to have the likes of Josh Cullen and Reece Oxford warming the benches of other clubs when they could be playing in games like these, but perhaps that's hindsight gone too far.

So we travel to the Emirates more in hope than expectation, although that was pretty much the same deal when we went to Spurs and that turned out alright. If nothing else, this will be another chance for the now famous Moyes defensive resilience to be tested, as well as a chance for a run out for Joe Hart which will be nice, so long as nobody shoots in that one side of the goal where he can't save anything. And here's a thing I noticed on Saturday, that gives me a little bit more confidence going in to this game than I probably should own up to - there were players laughing and smiling at Stoke, during the game. There was a confidence in the team that I can't really recall seeing for a year or two. PLayers like Cresswell and Lanzini suddenly look as though they are living their lifelong dreams once again, rather than being pressganged into a bank robbery that they really think is going to end badly.

Contrast that with Mark Hughes, a man replete with a face like he's just stung a bee.

***

It occurs to me that I never mentioned my big night out at the FSF Awards. I appreciate that not all of you waste your time on Twitter so may not know that I didn't win the Best Blogger Award, despite investing in an expensive and - I now realise - fraudulent Russian hacking scam offer. 

I would, though, like to thank all of you who voted for me either for the nominations or in the vote itself, and I am very appreciative of all the good luck messages on the night. Kieron at The Swiss Ramble won the award and is a very worthy winner. Still, one should never turn down a free meal and I did get a nice cheer in the room from the Hammers in situ. My thanks to all, it was a nice ride. 

This is not me, it's Ledley King, but I forgot to take any pictures