Ah, another game following the restart. Is there any point or should we just prepare ourselves for trips to Coventry, Rotherham and Millwall again?
I’m beginning to think we should throw in the towel. I’m struggling to see where we will get our next goal, let alone our next points under David Moyes.
Next up is Chelsea. Chelsea are currently pushing for the Champions League spots, are in the semi-final of the FA Cup and have recently beaten Man City to give Liverpool the title.
In Frank Lampard they have an up and coming manager with an impressive record with both Derby and Chelsea. In his 102 games in management he has won 48, drew 26 and lost 28, giving him a win percentage of 47.1% (currently at Chelsea his win percentage is 53.3%). Incredible stats for a young manager.
Lampard isn’t afraid to give youth a chance at Chelsea. He has introduced the likes of Mount (31 appearances), Abraham (27), James (18), Tomori (15) and Gilmour (4) to the Premier League. Probably because he knows himself how important it is to be given a chance to prove yourself.
It’s plain to see he and Chelsea are building for the future.
We weren’t even looking at the next 7 games when we decided to let Ngakia leave let alone past 18 months when we gave Moyes a contract! Hopefully the owners think they will have sold the club by that time!
TEAM NEWS
Ogbonna made the bench against Spurs at the weekend but still doesn’t seem to be available for tonight’s game.
Haller is back in training but doesn’t appear to be available for the game either. Which is just great since we can’t seem to put the ball in the net!
Masuaku is in the same boat as Ogbonna and Haller in struggling to shrug off an ankle injury.
Snodgrass looks to be out for the rest of the season.
PREDICTED LINE UP
With no Ogbonna, it looks like we will stick with same back four.
I thought Balbuena had a decent game and was surprised how people were calling him out for heading the ball out for the corner that led to Spurs 1st goal. If VAR had of done its job, then there would have been no goal!
Next, I would go with Rice and Soucek. I like the looks of Soucek so we will probably not sign him permanently when his loan runs out, remember Tihinen?
Bowen is as much a cert as Rice and Fabianski are.
I’m not sure what’s going on with Noble. He’s looking jaded out there and the advanced role that we saw against Spurs didn’t work at all. It’s time to give Wilshere a run out, he is injury free after all and would be looking to play himself into a new contract before getting injured again at the start of next season.
So, we are left with two more positions to fill. We need goals but who’s going to get them for us? Antonio, Yarmolenko, Anderson, Fornals, Lanzini or Silva?
None of them fill me with confidence of getting a goal.
I can see Moyes going for Anderson on the left and Antonio up front again and hoping for something different to happen this time (looks more like a case of insanity as per Einstein’s quote).
But what are the alternatives?
Lanzini instead of Anderson? That’ll just be the exact same as per above.
Yarmolenko up front and Antonio in behind or vice versa? Could be worth a shout but the last time Yarmolenko featured was against Southampton on the 14th December when he replaced Snodgrass in the 73rd minute in our 1-0 victory. He has a record of 5 goals in 26 appearances for us so not exactly prolific goal scorer. Although he did score 137 times in 340 appearances for Dynamo Kyiv so maybe he’s just suffering from the West Ham curse?
The other option is to give Xande Silva a run out. He scored 3 goals in 3 games for the U23’s before COVID 19 kicked in and could be hungry for Premier League game time to show what he can do.
Or even give Holland, Scully or Kemp a run out from our U23’s, they were scoring goals for fun during their season. Although none of them seem to be get a mention at all but then again it wouldn’t surprise me if a) they are injured; b) Moyes doesn’t rate them; or c) we have already released them!
My team for tonight would be:
I think it’s about time we started to give our youth a chance. Look at how it is working at Chelsea. It has worked when we gave Rice and Ngakia a chance. It also worked when we gave Rio, Lampard, Cole, Carrick, Johnson and Defoe their chances!
It’s just a pity we have Moyes as manager. He doesn’t seem to rate anyone unless they have massive fees paid for them. Or is this just him being a puppet with the strings being pulled from higher up, telling him what to say so as to keep himself in a job? He gave plenty of youth a chance when he was at Everton so why not now?
Stupidly I will sit down and watch the match tonight. Why am I still doing this to myself? The state of our club, the complete shambles we are at the minute is sapping my love for the game completely out of me. I can’t get myself up for watching us play.
Gone are the times when we could have pulled something out of the bag in these sort of games. I can’t see anything other than another defeat tonight.
Prove me wrong West Ham and give me something to get my interest back!
COYI!
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Previous H2H Blog: https://irishiron.sport.blog/2019/12/03/chelsea-v-west-ham-review/
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