Fear And Loathing in Manchester

Some terrible defending combined with a lack of any ambition to play football saw West Ham go down 3 - 0 at the City of Manchester Stadium. West Ham, buoyed by the return of absolutely no one, went out to prove its supporters correct in assuming that we came to Manchester to try and get a point at best.

The Somme

One of the most dismal displays of football ever witnessed saw massive amounts of down time through a constant barrage of injuries and knocks. Richards being the most notable after a head collision with his team mate, but more importantly for us Carlton Cole was taken off after being hip checked by my gran. Cole's quick departure set a tone for the game, with play constantly being interrupted by both the magic sponge, and the referee's inability to take the whistle out of his mouth.

Noble Sees Red

Noble got himself dismissed early in the game for two yellow cards - the first coming when he sophomorically grabbed the ball after falling over, and the second for a silly lunge on former US 200 metre star Michael Johnson. This whole situation was rather silly, and one noticeable thing about West Ham at the moment is that we are giving away silly fouls, and in doing so picking up unnecessary yellow cards - Noble's first yellow offence proving the former, and Neill's shirt-grabbing tactics over the last year proving the latter. Parker too seems to have changed as a player, and instead of his grit and gusto that we saw last season, we're seeing him give away silly fouls for lunging in and just generally barrelling people to the ground.

Pointless

With Noble gone West ham were forced to make changes, and after half time young Freddy Sears was replaced by Mullins. This seemed to tighten the midfield up a little (until they knocked 3 past us) but left Ashton stranded with little to work with besides long balls as he refused to track back. It became all too predictable, West Ham were content to knock the ball about in triangles until a pass went too short, or too far, or someone decided to smack it upfield for Ashton to plod after. Faubert gave the ball away a lot, at times it looked as if he didn't know the difference between the ball and his own feet. And I swear at one point the cameras switched to Curbs and it looked like he mouthed "we're going down" - I'm not joking.


Ratings, because I really can't bring myself to talk anymore about what happened in this game.

Greeny: One good save, one blunder after Davenport had saved the ball from going in twice. I really don't think that he saw too much of the ball each time that it went in, as the defence insisted on standing right in front of him and let people shoot from 8 yards out. Average at best; 6

Behrami: Didn't seem to posses the pace that I thought he did, and gave the ball away numerous times by emulating Ronaldo's little chop turn thingy. Picked up a yellow, looked a little out of touch, and disastrous marking on the third goal. Looked as if he was working harder than most however; 5

Davenport: Average performance from an average player, marked about as bad as the rest of the defence but did manage to save a goal twice in the space of 10 seconds subsequently almost snapping his neck again; 5

Upson: Below par performance from Matty, nuff said; 5

Neill: Constantly beaten down the left hand side, showed elements of shirt tugging, but did speak nicely to the refs; 5

Defence as a whole: Not at their best, they looked cluttered and slow, often times trying to do too much with the ball instead of just clearing the lines, and often times belting it up to Ashton instead of passing it out (not that they had too much help from the midfield).

Faubert: Also lacked the pace that I thought he possessed, gave the ball away too much, and preferred to shadow players instead of actually defending at times; 4

Noble: Made silly mistakes that resulted in his marching orders, he let the team down; 3

Parker: Also gave the ball away a lot and decided that the best time to tackle is not when face to face with a player but instead when behind one, shame really, and he needs to do better if we're to do better; 4

Etherington: He was playing? 2

Midfield as a whole: They seem more than content to not pressure until the opposition gets to about 20 yards out. They lacked any sense of creativity and we just don't look dangerous going forward. Also, where is this pace that Curbs was talking about? We looked flat footed all day. Huge gaps between anyone and Deano when he has the ball, and no width to our game.

Cole: I swear he doesn't actually run but is in fact led around by momentum or kinetic energy. The few touches he did get were poor and awkward often resulting in a change of possession. His injury was laughable and would have been run off by any 10 year old school-boy; 2

Ashton: Had very little to work with, but didn't do himself any favours by being about as mobile as Stephen Hawkings. He rarely tracked back even when we were down a man, and had to be content with high balls lofted at him, of which I believe he won none. Still, his hair wasn't dyed this week; 5

Forwards overall: Very little movement, very little service.

Subs

Freddy Sears: Was on for all of about 15 minutes, ran around quite a bit actually trying to pressure defenders, but again no service; 4

Mullins: Not too noticeable to be honest, just seemed to fill in space from Noble's departure. Just as guilty as the rest of midfield in his non-efforts of closing people down; 4

LBM: Such is my sheer hatred towards this man that I refuse to give him a positive score, so in order to figure out how he played you have to use a different scale with -10 being abysmal and -1 being poor (or status quo for him); I really don't believe that he ever gets a score that should be on the positive side. Anyway, he was chucked on to partner Ashton after we were about 7 goals down and saw the ball maybe twice. If it wasn't for a signature LBM insane asylum foul nobody would have even noticed he was there; -2


Overall

Overall it was just pretty poor, with the best West Ham effort coming from the fans singing Twist and Shout during Richards' injury. No ambition, no craft, no possible sign of creativity and too much absorption of pressure too close to our net. 1 shot on goal for the Irons pretty much explains it all, and if we show up with the same lack of venturism in the future we could get ripped apart by many teams. City weren't exactly at their best and merely got goals from using a bit of width and showing that unlike us they could keep the ball for more than 3 consecutive passes, and if that's all it takes to score on us then there are a lot of teams that could put us away. If we had been playing an average Man Utd today we'd have let in at least 7.

So, back to the drawing board and it is still early days yet. But in order for us to progress we need to get back to West Ham football and not this defencive tripe that we've been playing lately. We could definitely use a crafty play-maker in the Bishop - Berkovic - Benayoun genre (preferably with a surname that starts with a 'B" because I like trends), and we're going to have to pray that either we don't sell Anton, or that Collins starts off playing how he left if/when he returns from injury.

I'm disappointed to say the least.