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Sam Allardyce and Mauricio Pochettino – in their hunt for defeat excuses – both quickly jumped on the state of the West Ham pitch.
Talking after his defeat last Saturday Allardyce said “The pitch was never this bad in the four years I was here.”
Before yesterday’s game Pochettino got his excuses in early saying before kick-off :”The conditions will be difficult because the pitch is not so good, and the way we play, maybe it can affect us more than them”
And of course he pounced on it again afterwards adding:: “For us it was difficult for the way that we want to play, and the pitch wasn’t good and didn’t help us.”
Interestingly, he totally ignored the fact that our own manager and players like Payet and Lanzini also like to play the ball on the ground!
In reality there is no hiding the fact that the Boleyn Ground pitch is suffering this season despite the best efforts of the excellent ground staff.
The Desso Grassmaster pitch was originally installed at West Ham in 2002 and is supposed to be replaced every ten years but our move to the Olympic Stadium delayed an investment of around £1m to replace it.
The Hammers groundsmen would usually have 65 days from the end of a season to re-seed and regrow the grassbut this was drastically reduced to 35 days after our qualification to the early stages of the Europa League. We played three Europa League home games in July last year which took an early toll on the pitch.
Our Cup run has added a few extra home games of Wolves and Liverpool and the Under 21 have played on it three times hosting Newcastle,Fulham, and Arsenal developments teams. We have also been told Slaven Bilic often likes to train on the Boleyn Ground pitch much more often than his predecessor.
A source close to the West Ham ground staff told ClaretandHugh “There have been 38 events on the Boleyn ground pitch so so far this season, over double compared to last season and this is seriously is taking it’s toll on the grass. We have the growing lights on the pitch every night but it is a losing battle and the damage is already done”
The pitch will undergo further extra punishment in March with a West Ham ladies game scheduled nest Tuesday on 8th March and Mark Noble’s testimonial on Easter Monday on the 28th March.
Some West Ham fans have joked that the Boleyn Ground pitch is not used to having the ball on the floor so much this season under Bilic and that is cause of it’s fatigue.
It’s not a ploughed field. It might be a little more worn for the reasons stated in the article but compared with pitches of only a decade ago it’s like a bowling green. Now BFS has used the excuse I expect every losing manager will trot it out.
Why would Hippo complain ? If we had a low roof he might have a problem,
The Spuds manager has gone down in my ratings, before he kept quite or showed dignity,
He got the whole game plan wrong,He picked the wrong wing backs,when he brought Ali on it stunk of desperation and he could have ended up loosing him for the whole season and he was not 100%
If Slav had got it wrong he would have pointed at himself and held his hand up,
Same with Hippo but then we know all about his excuses,
They need to grow a pair or retirement should be an option,
They forgot to mention the blown light bulb in the karzi , and the fact that there was to many west ham supporters at the ground making a noise ? And that the bubbles from the bubble machine was making the grass slippery .
We got 3 points against the hated and detested spuds , everyone knows its killing them that we trounced the deluded mugs , and its become a custom this year for trying to belittle us and not give credit where its due, it will not stop until we prove them all wrong with getting results , I said it before and I will say it again , they are not enjoying our rise up the league allits doing is making the league more ccompetitive and stopping their rich dominance,
Its changing for the better and good luck to Leicester hope they don’t fade ! Except when they play us of course , take the points and just laugh at the comments , cos what they are doing is really subconciousely applauding our teams capability .
Take all criticism as a compliment .
COYI!!!!!S
ahahah… why is the Genius complaining about the pitch??? During his enlightened reign the ball never touched the ground… 🙂
I hope he likes the Old Trafford’s pitch, his next reign… lol
Lmao,that’s a classic Hippohead moaning about the pitch.It was always at its best when he was with us because players were stood like Subbuteo players watching it fly over their heads.No need to run around just take out a pilots license to play for him.Idiot,lol
The next excuse from them will be “the ball was not round enough,it was more like a……spud”