Dont write the Hammers obituary just yet

In Avram Grants programme notes this week he spoke of the fact that some of Chelsea’s success was down to the fact that they had been together as a team for a few years, this is something West Ham cannot claim to have, 3 players were playing their first league games for the hammers while only 3 others have managed over 100 league games for West ham. If you look back to the corresponding fixture 5 years ago, also a 3-1 defeat, 4 Chelsea players played in that game and if it wasn’t for Frank Lampards injury it would have been 5.

In this transfer window alone they brought in 8 players alone add to the players signed in emergency in January and this year alone West Ham have signed nearly a complete new team, perhaps this is the reason that for some periods of the games so far we have played like strangers. Armed with this knowledge I do struggle to believe the criticism aimed at Avaram Grant not only by the restless fans but also by the press who choose to ignore the tough fixtures handed out to West Ham to start the season with and the fact that when the transfer window closed his new players flew off to play for their countries.  Yes when you look at the league table it does not look good especially when you see Blackpool are currently 4^th with 7 points but last season Burnley had 6 points after 4 games and hull had managed 4 yet both teams still went down, After the game when questioned by some sections of the media if he was worried he rightly said if we are in this position after 20 games the maybe but after only four games no he is not worried. Every Hammers fan at the game would say that in the second half we played the more attacking football, maybe without creating clear cut chance but then we were playing the reigning champions who until Scott Parkers late goal hadn’t conceded this season and if Freddie Piquionne had not hit the bar when it seemed easier to score the last few minutes of the game would have been a lot tenser for Chelsea than they were. The fans have witnessed 90 minutes of pretty decent football at Upton Park in the two games that have been played there, it is just a shame that the first 45 came in the first half against Bolton and the second came in the second half against Chelsea, so if we could get them to play that way for a whole game then we should be up and running.

I have said it before and I will say it again, West Ham will not go down this season, by the end of November I expect us to be sitting out of the bottom three quite comfortably, in 2008-09,Franco Zola’s first season, at Christmas West Ham were 17^th one point above Man city with 19 points, 6 league games later, 4 wins and 2 draws, we were sitting 8^th with 33 points. When Zola took over as manager he won his first 2 premiership games but then only won once in the next 12 games and yet we still managed to finish 9^th at the end of the season so as you see now is not the time to be writing our premiership obituary, there is a lot of life left in this season with any more twist and turns to come.

One last note Bobby Zamora broke his leg playing for Fulham against Wolves this weekend and im sure many West Ham fans would like to wish Bobby a speedy recovery and hope to see him back playing soon. I think he is one player that Hammers fans would like to see back at Upton Park.