Well done Diego Poyet!
A young man who spent last season in the shadows felt the fiercest spotlight of his fledgling Hammers career all around him as he stepped up for the final spot kick of a truly difficult night but calmly put the lights out on Birkirkara.
It had taken far too long. It should have been sorted much earlier but a sideways and backwards passing Irons team, giving too much respect to the Maltese, decided to play it safe and made us all suffer painfully.
James Tomkins’ sending off was a refereeing disaster – a joke. But let’s be fair, the team stayed the course and eventually made it through.
However, some of them – notably Kevin Nolan and Matt Jarvis – may have had their last chance to impress Slav who knows very little about any of them in reality. He found out a lot tonight.
The ageing captain and the lack lustre winger will surely not be a part of his Premier League thinking.
One hundred and twenty minutes on a sweltering night may or may not be what the players needed but that’s what they and we got and at times it was as painful as pulling our own teeth out.
In the end it was all worth it because our penalty takers all stepped up to the mark – notably the one who had to clinch things with the final kick of the match – young Poyet.
Yes, he looked incredibly tense but he passed the ball into the bottom corner to ensure that we will be meeting Armenian outfit Astra in the next round.
By then we will have Dimitri Payet and Angelo Ogbonna available and with the team getting fitter by the day and hopefully understanding the Bilic philosophy a little better, there will be an improvement.
It was clear tonight that much of the Sam Allardyce thinking remains with mindless clearances from the back.
That will change and the fact is the manner of the performance doesn’t truly matter at this stage. These are very very early days and we are through.
Tonight for me though was the night Diego Poyet grew up. I like the lad a lot and he could force his way into the manager’s thinking big time after giving himself a confidence shot you can’t buy with that match deciding penalty.
COYI
I saw the game, must say that Jarvis did alright. You have to consider who he had to cross to in the box or lack of who he had to cross to.
I thought Nolan would do something against a side like Birkirkara but alas he really had lost his legs.
Maiga just isn’t going to spread mustard let cut the mustard at West Ham.
Nolan and Jarvis fail to impress.How many months have we been reading that on this site.Are there any rumours of how to get them off our books?
Utter dross from Hugh. Other than pen Poyet was as poor as everyone else. How you can single out Nolan and Jarvis and miss Zarate and Noble is typical. Let’s also not forget O’Brien! Slav seemed to lack a plan B which was very worrying.
Lol,what a surprise Matt.You only ever turn up to slag Hugh or an article.You must have a really interesting life!!!
Matt. I think you want the other site not this one
To be honest the whole team played appalling!! out of starting line up only zarate looked dangerous but was still lacking cutting edge or a killer pass… as for nolan i have no words i tuned in just as we went 1-0 down to see him give away possession 3times in 15mins in dangerous positions. please let this be his last game and hopefully lets introduce some of the new players into starting line-up, we need them by this showing tonight… Oh and Astra are from Romania and are a good team!!! we wont be scrapping through on pens with them… we would get smashed if we played like we did tonight
I, too, was impressed with Poyet’s calm assurance. However, while I agree with you about Kevin (sadly, as I have a lot of respect for him) I think you were quite wrong about Matt Jarvis. He had one of his better games, and I am not being ironical. He tried hard and did well.
agree with you chris, jarvis didnt do much wrong apart from getting tired last 20mins or so of 90mins which is understandable considering the heat … and he was one of our stand out players in both legs agasint lusitans.
If only he could cross properly he would make a good winger 😉
Only 3 of tonight’s team will start in the Prem, so thankfully we don’t need to panic to much. Infact this could be a blessing.. Slaven has seen how poor some of these old Sam players are these days & hopefully we will not be seeing much more of them in the future
whos your 3 then ? only walk in player to first team is payet atm.. and why samuelsen wasnt given 15-20mins to finish the game is beyond me. noble was rash a few times and poyet played some nice passes when he came on.
I would think Adrian and Cresswell will start in the Prem. The third is not so obvious. Could be Noble or Kouyate.
Totally agree Dainon.This isnt pretty & disappointing but it is certainly showing Slaven who he cant rely on when it comes to the Prem squad.
Dunno why Matt is getting slated. Poyet imo has done little in the Europa so far except pass sideways or back. While I agree Jarvis hasn’t done the biz for us since he arrived, in the few Europa games so far he’s looked the most competent and the most committed. Admittedly that means little against such weak opposition, but where are the rest of the team? Nolan – waste of space, Noble – huffed (and puffed), Amalfitano – went AWOL, Tomkins – should have known better, Collins – played Allardyce’s lump it forward game, Cresswell – Was ok but… no that’s it. He was just about ok. Kouyate was better in defence than midfield, and so it goes on. An appalling performance with no upside except that thanks to the penalty lottery we are still in it. Plenty of work to do.
And don’t get me started on Zarate and O’Brien
never liked o brien but he played well tonight i thought. when allardyce went i was like take him and nolan with you… now i think take nolan seen all off the above players in your post give a ****ing good shift in games apart from this laggy legged old timer. zarate needs to learn when to release a pass or shoot and will scoregoals
Probably because the only time he comes here is to have a pop at Hugh,thats why.Must be history i guess,lol
Agree with most of that except Ginger Pele on a few occasions bought the ball out and found some good through balls, me and the boys looked at each other with ironic raised eyebrows
When we bought Jarvis, he was the best crosser of a ball in the Prem
Most crosses does not necessarily equal best crosser.
When he transferred to WHU, he had the best ratio of; number of crosses + most accurate crosses in all of Europe. Probably the main reason we spent to much for him. He just never suited the Allardyce style of play and may flourish under Bilic’s style. He hasn’t put a foot wrong until today (like the rest of the team) so get behind him and back him to perform.
What a crock of sh*t, any team we put out tonight should have walked it. To scrape through on pens against a club who won the Maltese Cup….. ffs
the next time i see Nolan in claret & blue i would expect it to be when sitting on s****horpe’s bench..
ps. I’m not too happy about tonights game 😀
Hahaha,take that moaning back to wetpants with you cheers,lol 😀
Nah can’t be arsed to go there & be ignored all night lol
quality post haha
Yeah he crossed it,just didnt have a clue where it was going,lol
I’m left wondering just how serious Bilic is about Europe, putting out a virtually scratch team for the 1st leg at home.
If he is serious he is going to have to risk playing a team much closer to our first eleven. Hotchpotching isn’t going to take us much further
We were playing Malta’s second best team. Malta is an island about 14 miles square and most of our opponents team were locals. My old sunday league team should have been good enough to lose 1-0
Worst thing is there are only 2 teams in malta…..lol
team who won there league hibernians (unbeaten) lost agaisnt maccabi tel aviv in this round …. 2nd in malta league lost against newtown from wales in this round. lol.. we scraped it. God needs to help us get through 3rd qualifier haha
MY BAD hibernian lost champions league qualifier and valetta was 1st qualifier still come on you irons haha internet is so informative i just think im a football genius
As I said when I saw the team sheet I couldn’t see where the goals would come from, but I felt they would probably scrape through, clearly I wasn’t quite cynical enough as I presumed they would manage it without penalties.
Yeah, don’t get me wrong, I think Jarvis’s days are numbered but put in his position, who would of you crossed it to?
Oh boy, were we ****e tonight, and yes, I realise that rhymes.
To a man, bar Kouyate, we played like a team of Maltese amateurs. What I find even more worrying, and yes, I realise it was more or less a 2nd team, was the soft whimpering from the touch line and the press conference blaming the more suited climate and pitch to the home team.
What relief to finally take my head out my hands, but the real punishment will come at 9am tomorrow morning.
And what’s worse, I can’t even say s.h.i.t.e when I’m angry without big brother clipping my wings.
To be honest, the performance is woeful and unbearable, which I would not be able to give any positive ratings for the players during the 120 min of playing time. What I saw was collectively a bunch of bad tempered amateurs passing the ball around in their own half with no idea of how to attack.
We can still lie to ourselves that we’re in pre-season, but the league is starting in less than 3 weeks. The team performance in Europa league are unconvincing, hopefully Bilic is going to improve on that next Thursday by using better players.
I didn’t see the match but curious we had 60%+ possession and only 9 shots. They had 19 with half the possession!
A ‘Sam’ team who probably know they are not first teamers long term ( and some of them over last 2 years haven’t been and aren’t very good). But a bit like trying to motivate a team whilst you are recruiting a new team in the background. Try that at work today and see how it goes!
Shows we need a striker which is probably the only positive