IS THERE EVER A GOOD TIME TO PLAY SPURS?
Tottenham Hotspur 2 West Ham 0
First my confession. I haven’t missed a West Ham game, home or away, since the Premier League resumed, after the Qatari World Cup, but I have decided to sit this one out at home, because there is no worse place to be in the Known Universe than Tottenham, when the Hammers are losing.
I am, however, on an even keel as I sit down in front of the box to watch this one. Sky spend the half an hour before kick off extolling the goal scoring achievements of Harry Kane, who is presented with an anonymous looking award by Jimmy Greaves’ widow, Irene. She is all generous smiles and good wishes, but as everybody knows, Kane had to play something like 500 more games than Greaves to even get near that target.
I have decided to turn the sound down. There is only one thing worse than being treated like walkover away opposition by Sky Sports, and that is your game being shown last on Match of the Day because you are alphabetically at the rear of the Premier League list. But wait, shouldn’t that be Wolverhampton? Not if they’re playing Chelsea or Manchester United. Or Bournemouth.
l turn the sound up again. Graham Souness likes to be the controversial one so there is always the hope that he might say something good about West Ham, what with him sharing nationality with Moyes. An interview with the two of them about Nicola Sturgeon might be a worthwhile interval.
For a while the studio banter is bearable, until they start talking about Michail Antonio’s loss of form. Isn’t there something else to discuss? Like the 3-3 draw when West Ham scored three times in the final eight minutes. Nope. Not mentioned.
All I need to ruin my game now is for Alan Smith to be the match summariser with his Brummy drawl, a man invariably watching a completely different game from the one on the screen. And don’t get me started on when he summarises during Arsenal games. Who makes these editorial decisions? Put somebody neutral on, FFS.
But any team in the top six will get preferential treatment over the Hammers. Even when West Ham were in the top six for much of last season and nearly all of the one before that, they were treated like an over-achieving newly promoted ragbag outfit. Sky Sports, politically correct but table blind (unless your team is in the relegation zone).
Moyes has often been accused of showing a lot more respect for the perceived top six sides, and has done so today by not playing three strikers. It looks like Football Groundhog Day. Despite having changed nothing, West Ham fashion a genuine chance in the very first minute, Souček’s sublime square ball offering Bowen an early unchallenged shot at goal which is a foot wide with Fraser Forster stuck in a bucket of quick-setting concrete. This opening is inspiring stuff bearing in mind how badly West Ham started recent fixtures at Newcastle and at home to Chelsea. If anybody could know that this would be the closest we’d get to scoring all game, however, there’d have been many heading for the exits there and then. Of course if the game had been played at London stadium there’d have been 20,000 fans still queuing at the turnstiles who’d have missed it.
The first half is actually uplifting, with Hammers defending well against a determined but neutralised Spurs’ side, and apart from another, ‘I fell on my hand, Ref, how can that be a penalty?’ moment, this one from Thilo Kehrer, West Ham should feel quite satisfied with their first half performance. Tomas Souček, in particular, is a revelation in defence l, midfield and attack, blocking and passing with a equal measures of skill. Bowen, too, chases back and runs after everything in his sight, so you wish for the good fortune for him to have another chance like that first one, but it doesn’t come.
The second half, however, is a very different story. Moyes misses a chance to change the game plan to attack, content merely to keep things as they are, and when Spurs turn up the gas, Ogbonna gives the ball away in midfield, and ten seconds later it is passed into the back of the net, courtesy of Emerson Royal.
Sixteen minutes later, just after Moyes has finally brought on Ings and Benrahma, Spurs’ substitute Son hits a second, sadly again following unnecessarily surrendered possession.
In injury time the Spurs substitute Perisic almost garrots Jarrod Bowen by the touchline. Bowen is left a sprawling limping wreck after the challenge, but Perisic is not booked. Less than sixty seconds later he flies in with a vicious cynical challenge on Coufal that does get him booked. Tottenham back to the days of Ron Harris. Not a footballer, a spoiler. As a kid the Croatian international ‘all-rounder’ who ‘kicks with both feet’ worked on his dad’s poultry farm. Not a huge shift of the imagination to picture him choking chickens.
Looking at Moyes’ face at full time is like looking at your old man’s after a row. Same old face but you’re getting different feelings. This man has taken West Ham to places they haven’t been for 46 years. However it is only 12 years since Avram Grant.
I am reminded of the moment in Clips’ vids when West Ham go 3-0 up and you look into the White Dog’s moony eyes. These days that significant moment in any game is THE SECOND GOAL they concede. We don’t come back from that. (old Spurs 3-3 game notwithstanding) It’s because you know that these days West Ham can only ever score one goal per game. Perhaps it is now THE FIRST GOAL conceded as Hammers just cannot score goals like they used to, at home or away. Apart from the Everton game, we have not scored first in any home Premier League fixture since the Crystal Palace home game in November 2022, a quarter of a year ago.
If Hammers’ fans could look back at where they are now from a position in 2025, they might reasonably consider yelling, ‘Moyes – do us and yourself a favour – Don’t Play Antonio – he’s NEVER going to score again!’ What the hell – maybe yell it out, anyway… New ideas, please. NOW!
Hammers’ next three home games are Forest, Villa and Southampton. Even were they to win all three they would still only have 29 points, and with Liverpool, Arsenal and Manchester United to visit London Stadium following that, relegation comes firmly into focus as a consequence of what has been by any standards a dismal season in the Premier League.
Who’s up for a trip to Plymouth?
1 Lucasz Fabianski, 5 Vladimir Coufal, 24 Thilo Kehrer, 33 Emerson, 21 Angelo Ogbonna, 41 Declan Rice (captain), 27 Nayef Aguerd, 12 Flynn Downes, 9 Michail Antonio, 20 Jarrod Bowen, 28 Tomas Souček
Substitutes:, 18 Danny Ings, 22 Saïd Benrahma, 2 Ben Johnson
