Arsenal’s win over Chelsea was great news for West Ham who all still hold hopes of finishing in the top four this term.
While Chelsea will remain confident of finishing the job in their remaining two League games, Tuchel also has to balance his squad with FA Cup and Champions League Finals to contend with, they need one win one of their final two games to qualify for the Champions League.
Manchester United have already joined Man City in the Champions League next season, and Leicester would need to lose their last two games and see one of West Ham, Spurs or Liverpool win all their remaining matches to drop out of the top four.
Anything is possible and David Moyes will keep on trying until Champions League is no longer mathematically possible.
The Hammers must first concentrate on their own games starting with Brighton on Saturday evening at the Amex stadium.
A little optimistic!
Whatever happens it was still a great season – three defeats in four shows how much we missed Declan Rice – perhaps like Man U are now missing Harry Maguire and like Liverpool have missed Virgil Van Dijk
The CL would have been great – but I think that is gone now – I am not sure about the Europa League – our last forays into Europe under Pardew (for being FA cup finalists) and Slav have been distinctly underwhelming – but I would love to see us win our last three games (hopefully with Declan skippering us) as a platform for next season – I think the key is slow and steady improvement – let us vanquish the Brighton bogey tomorrow and then next year do the double over Newcastle
COYI
We’ve lost 3 of our last 4 games; that’s more like relegation form than champions league form. We’ll now do well to hang on to a Europa league place.
It’s probably over now with the Old Trafford result last night, but I’m sure Moyes will push the team to the very end in case anyone else slips up. “Never give up, never surrender” as they said in Galaxy Quest.
What it has done is show that the Board’s statement when we moved of “there’s no reason why we can’t be challenging for Champions League football in the next five years” has been proved correct. And don’t start on the “it’s despite them, not because of them”. You can’t have that selectivity of reason. It’s all or nothing. They’re not guilty of everything bad but get no credit for any positive.
Whether it has anything to do with protests and crowds is a debatable point, to which we should be honest and not slip back into the mindless “GSB Out” mantra. We have almost got European football and will finish ahead of Spurs and Arsenal. We have a decent team playing good football and a stable management team. Whether we all like it or not, we have a 60,000 seater stadium that doesn’t saddle us with £1bn debt and reasonable ticket prices. We have several ex-youth team players in the squad and more to come. Where have the Board gone so wrong?
As far as I’m concerned, we’re on the up and I’m a proud Hammer. If we can sustain this next season – with our wonderful fans behind us and not abusing the team to the point of making them nervous when we start to let a three goal lead slip – it could look like GSB are actually delivering on their original intentions (I won’t call them promises, because they never ‘promised’ anything).