West Ham United v Aston Villa Post-Match Thread

[Ads]

Oz, people will only see what their prejudice allows them to see. Fuck em'.

[Chipsticks]

Another good away point and a clean sheet. Fuck any c*** thay thinks an away draw is a poor result.

I actually agree with you. A point away from home against anyone in this league is a good result, especially considering that we're currently a lower-mid table side. I think people are just annoyed at the way we went about it today, and I suppose I'd rather draw 2-2 than 0-0 too.

[saunders_heroes]

Oz, people will only see what their prejudice allows them to see. Fuck em'.

Had a few drinks have ya? ;-)

[supertom]

This result was no surprise at all so I can't say I'm disappointed. West Ham are bobbins and we're bobbins at the moment. It was only ever gonna end in a snore fest.
A clean sheet is indeed positive, although not walking away with one against this lot would have left some serious questions.

The sooner we get Benteke up to speed and Gabby and Delph back in the side, the better. We need as much of our quality as possible.  But right now we've got a lot more questions than we have answers. Randy's got to get the check book out and Lamberts got to spend it on first 11 quality, particularly in midfield. If you don't have a single midfielder with decent technique then you're gonna struggle to keep the ball and no amount of formation tinkering will solve anything (if Lambert wants us to be a passing side).

I think a Bent style statement signing in midfield could well be in order in Jan. By that, a signing that will instantly change our side, show we're still here to compete and ensure that we nail down survival. Obviously this wouldn't be 24 million, but we will probably need to dig deeper than Lambert has thus far to acquire some proven quality, whilst still ensuring that sell on value has more potential than Bent.

[PeterWithesShin]

Another good away point and a clean sheet. Fuck any c*** thay thinks an away draw is a poor result.

Please take the night off and and apologise tomorrow. Calling others posters ****** for having a different opinion is not acceptable.

[olaftab]

I noticed that its the same people complaining about no goals in four who were complaining about no clean sheets a few weeks ago. We are a limited team and at the moment can do one or the other. We should give the team and manager credit for 3 clean sheets in last 3 away games.

[supertom]

I noticed that its the same people complaining about no goals in four who were complaining about no clean sheets a few weeks ago. We are a limited team and at the moment can do one or the other. We should give the team and manager credit for 3 clean sheets in last 3 away games.

We should but at the same time for all those who feel our dire home form can be appeased by good away form, there's a problem right now that we're not scoring as many goals away from home as we did from Feb-May last season. We've got to start stringing wins together somewhere. I'm thankful the defense looks better. But right now we look like we did under McLeish. We don't look like we'll concede masses of goals (though we imploded when Dunney got injured) but at the same time we look very poor in attack and are still losing more than we're winning.

[brontebilly]

In regard to the 'McLeish would've been slaughtered...' posts, that's true, he would have. But McLeish didn't oversee home and away wins over Man City, an away win at Arsenal, a 6-1 win to Sunderland etc.

For better or worse, we seem to visit the extremeties a lot with Lambert. MON and Gregory, for example, wouldn't have lost to Bradford, but then they wouldn't have effctively got us out of trouble with a 6-1 thumping (true, they probably wouldn't have got us into trouble in the first place), McLeish or Houlier would never have considered beating Man City 2-4 in a cup tie. Obviously the shite's difficult to take, but I quite like the possibilities Lambert offers.*

*Written after a boring 0-0 against West Ham. It's no wonder I'm atracted to our lack of coherence.

I agree there is a hope with Lambert that was never there with McLeish. I'm not sure what that hope is based on though, a season of his playing career with Borussia Dortmund does not equate to the next Jurgen Klopp. Lambert had achieved successive promotions with Norwich but so had Nigel Adkins at Southampton. Just think Lambert stumbled upon a decent set up half way through the game at home to Newcastle last season and we looked very dangerous going forward anyway for the remainder of last season. Gabby and particularly Weimann's form this terms has fallen away alarmingly, now we are 4 games without a goal and playing football that McLeish would consider primitive.
Lambert made a huge mistake in the summer wasting decent money on Kozak when an attacking goal scoring midfielder was what was badly needed. Now we have some total non entities playing in midfield, El Ahmadi and Sylla arent footballers at all.

[Matt Collins]

On the midfield, it definitely feels the weak link at the moment, I'm not questioning that. If we're not going to play Bacuna there, and Tonev isn't really a number 10, then with N'Zogbia injured, Holman and Bannan gone, then it's arguably been weakened since last season. Like others, I'd have really wanted someone with good technique who can either play in a two or three ideally; or a classic playmaker.

On Westwood, I agree his form is a cause for concern. But I don't agree he hasn't got good technique. He was a safety first player at time last year, but:
- he regularly posted pass completion stats of 93% plus. You can't tell me anyone can do that
- towards the back end of the season, he was playing some lovely defence splitting passes - for Gabby at Norwich away in the last minute for example. He's also the only villa player who's regularly assisted from set pieces in the last few seasons.

I don't accept that he's shit any more than I accept Lowton is. I do think he's not playing well on the ball - though defensively and positionally he's improved. In those respects, he's almost an allegory for the team.

Get Westwood and Lowton playing like they did in the last third of last season and it'll make a huge difference.

Plus, results wise, it is statistically proven that we're better than we were last season. What we clearly aren't, at the moment, is playing as well as we did in the last third of last season.

[eastie]

The last 3 months of the season filled wme with hope for this one but we seem to have lost our way somewhat - we don't pressure teams and seem to want it as much as we did late last season and there are too many players who have not performed to their best .

The likes of Lowton, kea, Westwood, gabby and Weimann all need to deliver or find themselves benched .

[preston28]

we need two or three midfield options in January, one at least that is not only different than what we have but significantly better to create things. Broken record, but it's critical now. We didn't look in much danger, becoming more solid, but in doing so predictable and rather boring. I suppose that might be the natural transition from last season.

I doubt Mr. Lambert will make any January purchases. He seems to prefer buying early in pre-season and integrating them into the team.

[Matt Collins]

Gareth Barry would be fantastic in our midfield. Just not on our balance sheet

[PeterWithe]

Well we were very well organised and the midfield quickly got back into  a bank of four when we lost the ball, which was nearly every time we had it. It was just so dull.

[Chico Hamilton III]

2 dull teams playing out the dull nil nil draw that I'd predicted in the pub before the match. A point, a clean sheet but very dull.

Nightmare to get back to Central London afterwards. Queued for 40 mins outside Upton Park tube then they closed the station and told us to walk to Plaistow which was rammed and no trains came for about half an hour.

[Ads]

Oz, people will only see what their prejudice allows them to see. Fuck em'.

Had a few drinks have ya? ;-)

Erm... lets just say I wouldn't be in a position to drive home. Still, drunken posting stops drunken texts.