Another Saturday afternoon kick-off beckons in this crazy Championship season which offers ‘feast or famine’ football. The second international break kicks in after todays game, with a further maddening two week hiatus after the Hammers’ latest three games in eight days physical assault course.
Surprisingly, only Kyle Walker Peters appears on the ‘injury list’ for West Ham, despite 14 league and 3 cup games already undertaken. Compared with our opponents today who have several players likely out injured, West Ham’s mixture of good luck and good player management seems to be doing the trick again this season, as it did last.
Walker Peters is likely to be the sole enforced absentee in Scott Parker’s match day squad
Speaking ahead of the game, Blackburn Rovers’ veteran coach Tony Mowbray evidently plans to reprise the tactics deployed by Millwall, Southampton, Cardiff and others -and expose West Ham’s well known early defensive frailties:
“”They’re beatable. They’ve lost their manager because they’ve lost too many games this year already and I haven’t seen a team that I think, ‘wow, they’re miles too good for us’.
“Swansea might give that impression, but I think we should be positive, aggressive, play on the front foot and try our hand and see how we get on against West Ham United.” (lancashiretelegraph.co.uk)
West Ham fans will hope to see a more confident, solid foundation created in just a few days – more than Nuno managed to instil in over a year: A tough ask, which is why it may still be far too soon to expect wholesale change.
Scoring the first goal – or two – would prove something of a welcome relief to the 7000 expected Irons fans travelling to the game today, who will all be aware of the Hammers’ terrible propensity to concede first.
As will Parker. Let’s see if he’s managed to instil, at the very least a new combative spirit in his players, and continue on with Wednesday’s second half mentality. Because the Hammers cannot rely on coming back from the dead every week.
Time for some grown up football, boys.
Teams have prospered by coming out all guns blazing and until that is seen to fail they will continue to do so.
There is a disadvantage to that in that if they don’t go ahead then they’ve expended a lot of energy and championship benches do not contain a lot of quality.
It’s also been seen how we overwhelm in the second half once they do run out of puff and quality.
My tactic would be to soak it up first half, not go behind, then nick it second half once they’ve blown themselves out. Should work but only for as long as it’s seen to be working and teams change their tactics again.
We’ve been seen to have a weakness and teams will try to exploit it until we stop them.