By CandH’s top blogger Allen Cummings
Does it pay to play fair in the Premier League? Are West Ham now paying a heavy price for being too honest?
Is the tiredness that many of our own fans are pointing to as a reason for some recent disappointing performances, a result of us being one of the few teams to carry on regardless when Covid was at its height.
The Hammers only had one game postponed while others were falling like flies – a home fixture with Norwich City on December 18th – and that was down to the Canaries crying ‘help’ not West Ham. That fixture has already been shoehorned back into our schedule of course, fortunately a game we won.
While other clubs called for postponements, citing covid cases within their camp as the reason, they were also allowed to consider injuries and absenteeism due to the ongoing AFCON tournament as factors in not being able to field a team.
We soldiered on regardless. Even though at one stage we had our entire first choice back four unavailable, plus our own AFCON absentee.
It’s true a bigger squad boosted by some new recruits in January might have helped. But it’s unlikely any additions would have been drafted straight into the first team as starters.
David Moyes would always endeavour to play his best team, and that almost certainly would have been the majority of players we see now – and have seen since the season began.
Take a look at the Premier League table right now. Although it tells a story, it doesn’t tell the whole story. The points column define each club’s position at present – but the games played column is significant and could have an important bearing on how the final table, the one that really matters, will look come May.
Even though some previously postponed fixtures have now been played, there is still a considerable disparity between teams – an uneven playing field if you like, that may have a massive part to play over the coming weeks.
It indicates some clubs have enjoyed generous ‘breaks’ to rest and recharge mid-season, when it’s needed most. West Ham haven’t and that could come back to bite us big time. Especially as European football is about to restart for us – and we still have an interest in the FA Cup.
West Ham as a club and David Moyes as our manager have tried to play fair, not use some of the dubious tactics others have been accused of – and could end up benefitting from.
‘Cheat never prosper’ is an old saying I remember from my school days. From what I’m seeing right now I’m not so sure that rings true in modern day football.
if there is such a thing as karma then surely West Ham will benefit later on when these clubs are having to play their games in hand and we don’t. We may not get a rest though because of involvement in Europe and the fa cup but at least we don’t have games in hand still to play on top of all the cup games.
We have no right to complain imo. The rules may have been bent, twisted and manipulated because the rules were obviously ambiguous but there were absolutely no reasons why we couldn’t have bent, twisted or manipulated those same rules had we seen fit.
We took the decision not to and now we move on.
Not sure I agree with you this time around, Allen. I believe that this – as much other – will need to be evaluated at the end of the season. Whilst we have played through a hectic program, with players missing, whilst our competitors have not – this could become a benefit for us the last half of the season as we have a less packed schedule than many others.
You might even argue it is a tactically played game by Moyes? If we had played 2-3 games less, we might have picked up some more points in the games we actually played (less fatigue, more players back etc.). However, we would have had a lot of games going forward; especially considering Europa League. For one, whilst I’m not happy looking at the table and calculating our “actual” position assuming those behind pick up points from lagging games; I’m very happy that we don’t have even more games going into the final stages of the PL and EL competitions.
I’m open to heinsight here – but let’s see how we fare going forward.
Allen makes some good points,
Although the demands of the season were clear for all to see back in Summer, no new games have been added and WHU squad size was questioned then.
During the season, it’s clear to most watching the games, David Moyes does not rotate his squad, use much in the way of substitutions or unpredictable tactical change, which seems to have been found out recently.
Covid absences/postponements are not a ‘cheat’, it’s not a case of cheating, but utilising the facility of calling off games and protecting us all from further covid spread.
It’s a bit too early to say the “cheats” will prosper from it. It does look that way as it stands but imagine if they don’t and we end up 4th. If we had postponed more than we did we could’ve ended up with another fixture pile up like December but in March. On the subject the execution of ‘lose the ball and bring the player down” is rife- Chelsea being the main culprits of matches I’ve watched. Man C were doing it a while back and stopped it as soon as it got big media coverage. The Covid/injury problem is much more difficult to prove.